It is hard to believe that a topic affecting half the earth’s population is still so often tiptoed around. With Let It Flow, writer, director, and editor Galina Chakarova picks up the conversation about menstruation by placing it within the dynamics of a heterosexual couple.
Kat (Holly Freeman) and Anwar (Antonio Aakeel) are vacationing in the English countryside, when Kat feels the first signs of her period. Chakarova draws on what many menstruating people endure: pain, shame, nausea, and the constant preparation it demands. No painkillers? Big problem.
The arrival of the flow is foreshadowed by dreamlike images of red liquid seeping into water before her body finally erupts with cramps and blood. It is powerful, and it cannot be stopped.
Let It Flow is visceral in its approach. Still a taboo onscreen, Chakarova does not shy away from making menstrual blood a visible and tangible part of the film. There is no neatness here: stained underwear, vomiting, the body buckling under pain.
What also emerges is an awareness of the sheer physical toll, how pain shapes behaviour and movement. Managing menstruation alone is hard enough. Doing so while on holiday with a new partner adds another layer of stress and discomfort.
The dynamic between Kat and Anwar underlines another reality. Menstruation is so often treated as an obstacle to intimacy. His mild frustration, “you are always on your period,” is telling. Yet by narrowing the conflict to sex, the film misses the chance to address the wider, everyday realities of menstruation outside the bedroom.
One moment in particular makes us reflect on our own stance. Anwar helping wash the blood from the sheets. If such an act reads as radical or heroic, it says more about entrenched taboos than about him. In a romantic relationship, this should be the bare minimum.
Ultimately, Let It Flow holds up a mirror to our discomfort, for both menstruating and non-menstruating people. The period still remains something to be hidden, excused, or managed quietly so others will not have to deal with it. Chakarova underlines how urgently representation is needed, not only to normalize the flow itself, but to dismantle the shame, acknowledge the pain, and bring visibility to what has long been silenced.