“He hit me four times from behind. … I fell on the floor,” says a muffled voice off-screen. Then the camera pans in on a bed-ridden woman as she drags out the reply to the question of who hit her. “Neptun … my husband.”

Kubra, a former TV anchor who lost her mobility and speech after a brain hemorrhage, is one of the heroines of “Dying to Divorce,” an 80-minute documentary on gender violence and femicide in Turkey. Directed by Chloe Fairweather and produced by the Turco-British team of Sinead Kirwan, Ozge Sebzeci and Seda Gokce, the film is Britain’s official entry in the Academy Awards for best international feature film. The shortlist is expected to be announced on Dec. 21.

The documentary took five years to make and at times felt impossible to finish, according to Fairweather. It tells the story of Kubra, an up-and-coming journalist referred to by her first name in the film, and Arzu, a traditional homemaker who was married off at 14 to a man 11 years her senior. Both of their cases made headlines in Turkey due to the perpetrators’ repetitive and brutal attacks and the reduced sentence of one year and 15 days given to Neptun Eker in 2018.

Arzu Boztas, mother of six, left her abusive husband in 2016 when she learned that he had raped a mentally disabled, underaged neighbor. In order to punish her for walking out, her husband shot her in her arms and legs, sentencing her to a wheelchair for the rest of her life. As he turned the rifle on her, Arzu begged him not to fire at her arms so that she could take care of her kids. Unmoved, he stepped on her hand and pulled the trigger, aiming at her elbows. He was sentenced to 35 years — 20 years for attempted premeditated murder and 15 years for rape of an underage girl. Arzu has gone through 16 operations but hasn't recovered the use of her arms. “Her situation is getting worse, not better,” Sebzeci, one of the producers, told Al-Monitor.