A feud between Muslims and Sikhs has kept the two nations at war with each other since the country gained independence from Britain. They raped women of opposing religion and then forced them to convert. These female victims were ruthlessly despised and even murdered by their own family members in the name of honor. Silent Waters is a story about a loving middle-aged woman named Ayesha who fled from her Sikh home and married a Pakistani to save her own life. The film shows the changes in her son, Saleem, who eventually becomes a bigoted Islamic fundamentalist, and cautiously brings Ayesha back to her past in 1979. As such, her recollections depict a society where women are branded as outsiders and are victimized as bridgeheads to conquer the enemy, representing the stubborn persistence of violence that religious ideology breeds in such a society. The film sharply criticizes the suppression of women through Ayesha′s choice for death instead of accommodating the male-oriented society, and then encourages solidarity through another woman who remembers Ayesha′s story. The memory that is ′silent′ but remains like ·waters′ lets the voice ot women be heard in a world of deep-rooted patriarchal fundamentalism. (Kim Ji-hoon)