Paying Tribute to Cinema as a Form of Remembrance: Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird)
This FIPRESCI Prize-winning debut film acts a form of homage to and remembrance for Yo, the co-director Anna Fitch’s late friend. In playing with different manners of cinematic representation, the work playfully and thoughtfully reanimates Yo’s memories, also using them to understand Anna’s own life.
During a time when you’re searching for yourself as an artist, but first and foremost as a woman, it’s a gift to meet someone who isn’t necessarily an ideal role model but who has faced similar struggles, rejected all norms, and made some serious mistakes, yet hardly regrets a thing. US filmmaker Anna Fitch was just 24 years old when she met the free-spirited 73-year-old Yolanda Shea. The friendship that blossoms between the two becomes a gift of this kind for Anna: a rare, inspiring, and comforting one. As Anna accompanies Yo through the final days of her life at 88 years old, the former responds to this unconditional gift with the most meaningful gesture possible: Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird), a unique 2026 documentary that not only honors her friend’s extraordinary story but also crafts a second life through her memories.
Winner of the Outstanding Artistic Contribution Award at Berlinale 2026 and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 29th Flying Broom International Women’s Film Festival, the film is a highly creative production co-directed by Anna Fitch and her husband Banker White, who appears in the film alongside her. Combining footage from the daily life of Yo through interviews with her, old photographs, a lifelike puppet, and a replica house, the film tells the story of Yo’s journey from Geneva to California, the turning points in her life, and her free spirit that never settles down anywhere. While Yo wisely shares her unconventional perspectives on life, sexuality, parenthood, loneliness, and death—rather than simply recounting a chronology of events—Anna, who filters certain moments through her own lens and reanimates them, is searching for herself within Yo’s story. Through this story—which at times overlaps with her own and at other times diverges from it—she reflects on her relationship with her father, her acceptance of her body and her art, and her experience of becoming a mother. Having grasped Anna’s motivation and the ontology of representation in cinema, Yo tells Anna right at the beginning of the film, “You can shoot whatever you want. After all, it won’t be me; it will be another woman in the film.” Ultimately, the puppet Yo—which Anna made using her own hair—becomes a representation of Yo’s representation in the film. It serves as a mirror through which Anna can see herself in her friend’s reflection.
But Anna doesn’t just bring Yo to life with a puppet that looks exactly like her. She has also built a 1/3 scale version of her house. This house, which took 10 years to complete and whose every detail has been carefully considered, may at first glance appear to be an exact replica of Yo’s house. However, after Yo’s death, the house where the puppet lives begins to slowly change shape. Just as we rewrite our memories as we recall them, Yo’s life continues to flow, having transformed after her passing. This house is neither a static memorial nor a parallel universe. It is a living space where not only Anna’s, but also her daughter’s relationship with the older woman—who was still a baby when Yo died—can grow deeper. It is a counter-hegemonic Barbie house where the naturalist Anna brings in wildflowers, ornate insects, and colorful butterflies. It is a living organism where life blossoms and memories give birth to new ones. In this way, Yo finds a second life in a world built around her memories. Using art as a means of mourning and writing one’s own story through that of another, the film also demonstrates that memories have lives of their own.
Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird) is a deeply personal story about friendship across generations, embracing life as it is, and accepting death as it comes. But its significance doesn’t stem solely from the fact that it brings together two themes—old age and friendship—in a way that cinema often shies away from, in an exceptionally elegant form. Without using any generative AI tools and by highlighting handcrafted artistry, Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird) pays homage to cinema’s animation-based roots and its vital role as a form of remembrance.
Ece Vitrinel
Edited by Olivia Popp
©FIPRESCI 2026