A quiet, delicate, and devastating film, Widow of Silence also manages to be suffused with humor and dark irony while shining a light on the plight of women in Kashmir whose husbands have disappeared during the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan over the disputed region.

In the case of Aasiya, a nurse trainee (a remarkably subtle and lucid Shilpi Marwaha), her husband disappeared seven years earlier after being taken by the Indian military. She has never received a death certificate, so she travels to the local Indian government office almost every day. Since she has no certificate, she is not considered a widow and can’t receive any property or money from her husband, a saffron farmer, and because she is considered a “half-widow,” she is unable to marry.

Her 12-year-old daughter, Inaya (Noor Jahan), carries a picture of her father in her schoolbooks, and at school, the other students taunt her, calling her a “half-daughter,” and throw wadded up paper at her. Aasiya also cares for her mother-in-law, who is the town matriarch (and by town, I mean a small collection of mud-baked houses built into the mountainside) as she approaches her final breath. She hasn’t spoken a word since her son disappeared.

Director and writer Praveen Morchhale uses this initial conceit to examine the various ways the poor have to accommodate living under a military occupation. He does this though a microcosm: a small pickup truck that drives riders over the border and into the nearest large town. The jovial cab driver (Bilal Ahmad) plays a bit of a jester role as he needles and cajoles the guards and occasionally his passengers as he waxes philosophical. The group of passengers range from an older Muslim woman who insists that men not sit next to her, to a flower seller, to a man who sits on the roof because he becomes “suffocated inside.”

Meanwhile, the only way Aasiya can obtain her husband’s death certificate is to go through an unnamed government official (executive producer Ajay Chourey), who first demands her land and then something more ominous, but he never raises his voice, his approach is a practical insistence, claiming “It’s not a bribe; it’s a help support system.”

Morchhale brings all of this to a head very slowly and deliberately. He steeps us in the culture and the life of the village. Every location is distinctive, such as the shots of women washing clothes, the rundown locker room at the hospital, and the lonely guard station, which consists of soldiers sitting on folding chairs outdoors. This is contrasted with the stark majesty of the autumnal scenery. There is a stupendous, long take following the taxi as it comes down the mountain that is simply breathtaking and a reminder that so much hurt and pain can reside in such beauty.

There is a strong streak of irony that culminates in the final moments as Aasiya uses the bureaucracy against itself to score a victory, one of the most surprising and satisfying endings in recent memory. On par with the style of Widow of Silence, it is a distinctly discreet and underplayed moment.