God exists, Her name is Petrunya (5 Stars)

I moved from England to Germany three years ago, and this is one of the advantages the move has brought for me as a film fan. In Birmingham I was only able to see American blockbusters, English films and a random selection of the most successful Indian films. In Stuttgart the American blockbusters are also available, together with a limited selection of the biggest English films, but there's also a good mix of films from Russia and every European country. France is especially well represented, with two French films being shown every week. And then we have "God exists, Her name is Petrunya". What's the chance that a Macedonian film would be shown in a Birmingham cinema? Zero.

Petrunya is a young woman in the Macedonian town of Stip. She has difficulty getting up in the morning. She's 32, she lives with her parents, she has no boyfriend and no job. She has a university degree in History, but nobody considers that it's worth anything, especially because her speciality is the Chinese Revolution. Maybe it would be easier for her if she had more support from her mother, but all she hears from her is things like, "Petrunya, you're pretty, but you're too fat".

In Stip there's a custom that once a year, on January 6th, a wooden cross is thrown into the river by a priest. The local men, ridiculously dressed in bathing trunks, jump into the icy cold water to retrieve it. The man who finds it is guaranteed good luck for the whole year. Petrunya has a keen eye. She spots the cross on the river bed while the men are searching in the wrong place, all together in a herd. She jumps in and grabs it, but the men don't accept her as the winner because she's a woman. Another man pulls it out of her hand. The priest declares her the winner and makes him it give it back to her. Petrunya slips away while everyone is still arguing.

The priest receives an angry phone call from the archbishop, who tells him that it's un-Christian for a woman to keep the cross. She's arrested and accused of stealing the cross. She's put under immense pressure by the police and the church, and she has hardly anyone who take her side.

Macedonia is a small republic that used to be part of Yugoslavia. Its official name is North Macedonia, because Greece objected to it calling itself Macedonia. (Does one country have the right to decide what another country calls itself? That's a question for another day). The country has a strict patriarchal structure, enforced by the church. The woman is expected to be submissive to her husband and never, never leap into rivers on January 6th. If she's pretty she's allowed to put herself on show, maybe doing a job as a secretary or a waitress. Being groped is an occupational hazard, and if she goes along with it she'll succeed... if you can call a life like that success.

Petrunya isn't a particularly religious woman, but the possession of the cross gives her strength. The men around her become increasingly violent, first insulting her with terrible words that I refuse to repeat here, then spitting at her and saying they want to stone her. This doesn't intimidate her. It makes her grow stronger. As the film progresses she becomes more self-confident, rising above the difficulties. By the end of the film all we see is Petrunya, while the men, whether they're the police, the church or the mindless rabble, fade into the background.

The film is full of feminist imagery, some of it overt, some of it subtly inserted. Early in the film Petrunya says that she only feels comfortable when she's naked. A naked woman is a strong woman. Yet when she's in the river she's the only fully clothed person surrounded by half naked men. There's a time and a place for everything. Before taking hold of the cross she walks around with a legless, armless showroom dummy. An incomplete man?

The film is loosely based on an incident that occurred in 2014, but it goes a lot further. It's an affirmation of the strength of Woman. The film might be offensive to the Christian church, a religion with a male God based on a book written by men, but women, all women, should rejoice when they watch it. They should, but they probably won't. In the film one of Petrunya's biggest opponents is her mother. She's a representative of the "Big Mamas" in the SCUM Manifesto, the women who take the side of men in order to keep women suppressed. Women fighting for superiority – equality isn't enough – will always have other women fighting against them, accusing them of being "toxic feminists". Petrunya is a woman who fights and succeeds.

Is God a woman? If She is, Her name is Petrunya.