{"id":13160,"date":"2023-03-13T08:39:45","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T13:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=13160"},"modified":"2023-03-13T08:39:48","modified_gmt":"2023-03-13T13:39:48","slug":"3-berlinale-favorites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2023\/03\/13\/3-berlinale-favorites\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Berlinale favorites"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the benefits of being a Cinepoetics fellow<\/a> at the Freie Universit\u00e4t 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.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

1. Between Revolutions<\/a> (\u00centre Revolutii<\/em>, 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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