Sarah, a former professional kickboxer from Vienna, accepts an offer to work as a personal trainer for a rich family in the Middle East. She finds herself in a foreign world, in a palace behind walls and cut off from the internet, where the sisters are under surveillance around the clock. They have no interest in learning to box. So why has Sarah been brought here?
Direction
Ayub's patient, withholding gaze never lets you trust what you see.
Acting
Holzinger's physicality speaks where dialogue fails her.
Cinematography
Palatial spaces that feel increasingly claustrophobic.
Director
Kurdwin Ayub
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Florentina Holzinger is primarily a performance artist and choreographer; this was her first dramatic lead, and Ayub specifically wanted her untrained acting presence.
The film deliberately refuses to name its Middle Eastern country, creating a liminal space that mirrors Sarah's disorientation and critiques Western films' tendency to exploit 'exotic' locations without specificity.
AT
