Velká Británie, 2013, 20 min
Elise Laker
25.01.2014 17:45
Every year, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers leave Tajikistan in search of employment. The money sent back provides a huge boost to the economy; in fact, Tajikistan is the most remittance-dependent country in the world. The vast majority of these migrants are male, which means the Tajik population is becoming ever-more female. So what happens to the women who are left behind?
Behind the Wheel serves as an inquiry into the moral and emotional turmoil of Nigora, an Uzbek woman whose traditional life of being a housewife is interrupted after her migrant husband fails to send back enough money and she finds out he has been having an affair. No longer able to rely on her husband, Nigora defies prevailing gender norms and sets to work fixing car tyres.
Elise is a recent graduate of the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, where she received training in observational filmmaking. Alongside her MA, she hold a BA in French and Russian from University of Nottingham. Elise has travelled extensively throughout Central Asia and has a fascination with post-Soviet countries.
Production: The Granada Center for Visual Anthropology, University of Mancherster, UK
Director, camera: Elise Laker
Dialogues: Uzbeck, subtitles: English, Czech