Along a Kazakh river, womxn speak about love, rage, and survival. Their voices cut through water and silence, turning scars into resistance. Tenderness becomes defiance.

Kristina Mikhailova asks womxn and girls to imagine themselves as a river. Village girls, young city dwellers, LGBTIQ+ activists, a headmistress singing the praises of gender-conformist education, womxn in prison, students with dreams of emigrating, as well as recurring conversations of toxic masculinity, sexual assault and, finally, the trial of a former economics minister who brutally murdered his wife, Saltanat Nukenova.

The “river girls” also talk of their desires, dreams and utopias. A brave act, since the interviews take place against the backdrop of a gender-conservativism that is often hard to imagine. The emerging panorama of female life plans combines into poetry through the guiding metaphor of the river.

With radical tenderness and almost sociological rigour, feminist demos and the art of active listening give rise to political scenes marked by sisterhood and solidarity.

Enter the river. Dream dangerously.