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Review

It's 1939, and with Europe on the brink of war, writer and Swiss socialite Annemarie Schwarzenbach and ethnologist Ella Maillart embark on a car trip from Geneva to Kabul, Afghanistan, each fleeing their past and each in pursuit of different goals. Annemairie, a restless soul with a drug addiction, is searching for meaning in her life; Ella is seeking a mythic tribe of nomads who live in the caves of the Kafiristan Valley. The emptiness of the dusty landscape and the danger of the journey brings the two close together sparking the simmering desire the two feel for each other.

Based on the actual diary kept by the real-life Schwarzenbach, the film is erotically charged and breathtakingly photographed. The two women's love fills every ravishing vista they traverse. With her short hair and men's clothing, Annemarie, (played by the magnetic Jeanette Hain) makes for a mesmerizing androgynous force, driving through the desert with a cigarette dangling from her lips, swimming nude across a lake, and seducing a Turkish ambassador's wife. As the region braces for war, personal tensions grow between the two. An absorbing portrait of two women who push hard to defy the conventions that constrain them and to discover their full potential.(German with English subtitles)

Noelle Reilly