It’s not easy to watch Kazakhstani drama Ayka, but that’s sort of the point. It’s a miserable life. Even as she’s still bleeding from her pregnancy, and the snow piles on during a terribly cold day in Moscow, she still has to scramble for work to pay off debt back home, and her pay isn’t guaranteed simply because her visa expired. Director Sergey Dvortsevoy depicts this with no flourishes, simply having a camera follow behind Samal Yeslyamova as she portrays Ayka’s life side by side richer customers, but there’s no denying how tense the approach ends up being, since the stakes are made clear for her everyday: it’s either work or die, and Ayka barely says a word because the people around her can shift her fate for the worse, if she’s not careful. Ayka isn’t an easy watch, but it makes it clear how hard to live this life is, especially due to the central performance that makes this film.