Hide & Seek

A woman recounts an incident of sexual violation that she had faced in childhood. She tells the camera that this was the first time she was talking about it. It happened to her when she was ten years old, and now she has a daughter who is older than that. If the film were a documentary, this would have been called oral storytelling. But despite being a fictionalised account, the story feels real, her acting convincing. This is because the tale that she narrates is all too common. Acts of violence against women in public are visible, and therefore acknowledged, but what happens behind closed doors remains a secret that most often women are burdened to carry all their lives.

The woman tries to convince the listener that she is over her pain. It happened a long time ago, and happiness has found its way into her heart. But unspoken, unshared trauma is like an unhealed wound, it doesn’t go away by closing your eyes to it. It is the telling of the pain, and its acknowledgment that begins the process of healing for the survivor, and the film delivers that point.