One of the benefits of being a Cinepoetics fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin this year is that I was able to see a lot of films at last month’s Berlin International Film Festival, thanks to my Cinepoetics accreditation. (Another benefit is simply to be in Berlin, which is such a rich place for film, music, art, and theatre festivals, exhibitions of various kinds, and so much more. I’ll post something eventually about some of that.)
The Berlinale screens a tremendous diversity of films, from the popular to the experimental, with multiple themes every year. Of my favorites, these were three that stuck with me, for different reasons:
1. Between Revolutions (Între Revolutii, dir. Vlad Petri, Romania, 2023) – A Romanian film organized around a series of fictional letters (inspired by letters found in the Romanian secret police archives) between two close women friends who had met in medical school and got separated when one went home to Iran during the 1979 Iranian revolution. It’s a “docufiction” told through a remarkable assemblage of mostly heretofore unseen documentary footage from revolutionary and post-revolutionary Iran and Romania, that probes the oppressive nature of two authoritarian, patriarchal systems and the mixed impacts of revolutions. The subtext of gender/sexuality politics gives it a continuing relevance, but the themes of war and revolution have not gone away, and the perspective on Iranian history is very helpful today. This was, for me, a fascinating, tender, and deeply emotional film.
2. Eastern Front (Skhidnyi Front, dir. Vitaly Mansky & Yevhen Titarenko, Ukraine, 2023) – All of the Ukrainian (or Ukraine-themed) films I saw were excellent: they included “Iron Butterflies,” with its “investigative aesthetics” (to use Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman’s term) of the Russian downing of flight MH17; the Polish-produced “In Ukraine” (“W Ukrainie”), with its direct, observational-camera perspective on the war; and Tonia Noyabrova’s “Do You Love Me?”, which was such an enjoyable and well acted film (taking place in early 1990s Kyiv) it almost made me forget about the war. But “Eastern Front” was utterly gripping and powerful, a mix of embedded documentary camerawork from the front (by co-director and volunteer medic Titarenko) tightly coupled (in beautiful rhythms) to a deeply human portrayal of the war’s impact on its real characters, their families and friendships, and the towns and villages they move through. Its relevance to current events is obvious.
3. Notes from Eremocene (Poznámky z Eremocénu, dir. Viera Čákanyová, Slovakia, 2023) – A dystopian analog-plus-digital sci-fi essay film structured around the conversation between a future virtual post-human and an Artificial Intelligence, about the last days of (what we now know as) humanity, the Era of Loneliness (“Eremocene”), the algocracy of DAO (digital autonomous organization) “democracy,” and the subculture of “botomori” (including purported Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto) who leave the data world to disappear in oceans and other places. Funny, quirky, sad, and intellectually stimulating in equal measures, this film will not be particularly popular, but it did an excellent job capturing the pulse of recent developments in the worlds of media and AI.
Dear Adrian,
Hosting once again a Vermont Council on World Affairs delegate from Ukraine for a program to study transplantation and the I.C.U. for a whirlwind week, I am learning a little bit of Ukrainian. If I remember correctly “zorya” means sunrise. This gives me a sweet appreciation for your son’s name. How is he doing? I can only imagine how his keen mind is enriched by your year in Berlin. My very best wishes.
Hi Martha – Good to hear from you. “Zorya” means star, especially dawn star, so Zoryan means “he” (Zoryana would be “she”) “of,” “from,” or “who came from” “the (dawn) star.” It’s a short form of Zoreslav, which means “he who glorifies the stars” or “he who glorifies the dawn.” He’s doing very well (and, among other things, has become an expert on rewilding). We’ll catch up when we return.