Ayka

Ayka (Айка, 2018) is a six-country drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Sergei Dvortsevoy and starring Samal Yeslyamova.

A young Kyrgyz woman arrives in Moscow needing money, gives birth, and walks out of the hospital without her newborn. February in the city is unforgiving: Ayka moves from shift to shift, dodging a landlady who wants rent, carrying a body that just delivered a child. The camera stays close, almost uncomfortably so. Yeslyamova took home the Best Actress prize at Cannes 2018 for this role — a performance so interior it barely reads as acting.

Dvortsevoy came from documentary filmmaking, and the film shows it in how it refuses to editorialize or forgive. Stream Ayka (2018) on iFILM.