När mörkret faller

Sometimes just one scene in a movie is so powerful that it can grab you by the throat and squeeze tears from your eyes. Last night, while flicking through the tv channels, I came across such a scene.

The movie is called "När mörkret faller" (When darkness falls) and it is from Sweden. It was about halfway through when I started watching it.

A young girl (Nina) has apparently left her family and is staying at a hotel. She misses her family and her younger sister (Leyla) and calls, wanting to come back. Her mother offers an alternative; a trip to Germany with the rest of her family to marry someone of their choosing and she agrees.

In Germany, they stop at a hotel for the night, with the younger sisters in one room and Nina and her mother in another with the rest of the family in other rooms. Leyla wakes up in the middle of the night and sees the men of the family taking Nina out into the street. She runs out and witnesses the men making Nina run across the busy road to the other side. Even as she manages to dodge the heavy traffic and arrive safely on the other side, there are other men waiting there. They make her run back and forth until finally she is hit.

I was sitting up straight and had tears in my eyes as Leyla lets out gut wrenching screams. And I wish I had started watching this movie from the start so I knew why Nina's family decided to kill her in this brutal fashion. As I sat through the rest of the movie I learnt that they had arrived at that decision because they thought she wasn't a virgin. They decided to kill her to protect their family's honour.

This movie isn't just about Nina, Leyla and her family. there are two other story lines. One involving a club manager who witnesses a shooting and decides to testify after getting death threats to him and his family. The other about an award winning journalist who is violently abused by her husband of ten years and finally goes public with it.

The three stories doesn't interconnect yet the movie cuts back and forth between them and their similar themes. The violence that is inflicted upon the main characters and the moment they decide that enough is enough and takes a stand and the fallout of that decision.

The rest of the movie was very good but that Nina's death scene has stayed with me. I cannot imagine myself being that dishonoured to wish death upon a loved one, upon family. I don't understand honour killings.

Everyone has the right to chose their own path in this life. None of us can chose it for them.