The rising profile of transgender issues could clear an arthouse path for Laura Bispuri’s sensitive, deliberate debut feature, though it’s not a film that actively advertises its own topicality. Set instead within a fascinating subset of Albanian society where female-to-male gender transition is a tradition as old as the snow-blasted Alpine hills, Bispuri’s film stars an effectively cast Alba Rohrwacher as a rural woman who, after living as a man for 14 years, embarks on an uncertain path to reclaim her original identity. Under the region’s code, known as the Kanun, a woman may forswear her female identity to live and pose as a man, taking a vow of lifelong chastity in the process. In exchange, she is exempt from the strictly servile role prescribed for women by the Kanun – an oath that essentially amounts to the exchange of one set of sexual liberties for another.