I started menstruating very young and was told never to discuss it with others. I learned the euphemisms (my maasi from Russia is visiting). I tried to follow the code of secrecy, but it was hard. I have PCOS. It meant I bled like a Biblical flood, staining clothes, sheets and sofas, spending a lot of my meager salary on expensive sanitary napkins. The world that week was a blur of pain, nausea, weakness, painkillers and laundry.

Along with it, I worked in a profession that favours machismo. Filmmaking is shaped as an endurance test: long hours, irregular meals, all-nighters in smelly studios with filthy toilets. We would joke about how our thigh muscles got strong, while our kidneys got weaker. We would not-joke about how many women never became filmmakers, because there weren't enough toilets.