Crushed Wings (2021)

Based on true-life events, this film boldly challenges dangerously prevalent and outdated ideas surrounding FGM, forced marriage, abuse ,and honour killing. The story of brave Ria, an FGM-survivor who goes through a journey through the impossible. Ria, a five-year-old girl, is led by her mother to a place where a group of women from her community wait for her. Here she is held down and gagged. Screaming in unanesthetised agony, she is mutilated by an unqualified "cutter", who through the brutal removal of parts of her genitalia completes the cultural ritual that ensures she will one day be taken as a wife. But this cruel act is just the beginning of the cycle of abuse that it epitomises. The child, once old enough, goes on to be forcibly married to a violent drug addict and moved away from her family to the UK. Eventually, Ria, at the risk of violent repercussions from her shamed and angry husband, seeks help in escaping the life she is trapped in, but her young sisters' lives hang in the balance. Can she change her elders' minds and prevent them from being led down the same path? Or will they become three more of 200 million women across the globe whose wings have been crushed by FGM?

Based on true-life events, this film boldly challenges dangerously prevalent and outdated ideas surrounding FGM, forced marriage, abuse ,and honour killing. The story of brave Ria, an FGM-survivor who goes through a journey through the impossible.

Ria, a five-year-old girl, is led by her mother to a place where a group of women from her community wait for her. Here she is held down and gagged. Screaming in unanesthetised agony, she is mutilated by an unqualified "cutter", who through the brutal removal of parts of her genitalia completes the cultural ritual that ensures she will one day be taken as a wife. But this cruel act is just the beginning of the cycle of abuse that it epitomises. The child, once old enough, goes on to be forcibly married to a violent drug addict and moved away from her family to the UK. Eventually, Ria, at the risk of violent repercussions from her shamed and angry husband, seeks help in escaping the life she is trapped in, but her young sisters' lives hang in the balance. Can she change her elders' minds and prevent them from being led down the same path? Or will they become three more of 200 million women across the globe whose wings have been crushed by FGM?