The program of a film festival doesn’t necessarily need to reflect the reality of the country where it takes place. But it’s always interesting to see the coincidences.
In the case of the 36th Moscow Film Festival, it’s curious to notice the preponderance of films featuring strong female characters in the Competition. A gesture that curiously dialogues with a well-known social phenomenon: The primacy of the female population over the male in Russia.
Paradoxically, this has not led to a general awareness of the rights of women in the country. That’s why there is something like Pussy Riot, the famous feminist movement that, with their actions and punishment, also uncovered a big flat in the Russian reality: The lack of freedom of expression.
Femininity and freedom are just two concepts that can be found in Yes and Yes (Da i Da) by Valeriya Gay Germanika. The chronicle of an amour fou in which the director reflects on the close relationship between spite and creation. And she does it through the eyes of a young teacher who is caught between the drab slavery of his home and his devotion to a young painter inclined to excesses. It’s definitely a personal and challenging film that unfortunately must undergo an adaptation before its commercial release: the swearwords must be cut, according to the new laws in Russia.
The Ukrainian film Brothers: The Final Confession (Braty. Ostannya Spovid), by Victoria Trofimenko, also shows the devotion of a woman by male characters, in this case, two brothers who have not spoken for over 40 years. The intruder — a mysterious writer who reaches the Carpathian Mountains (played by Natalka Polovynka, voted Best Actress) — becomes the only link between them. She is a woman without identity who is emotionally involved in a story of hard feelings, tragedies and non-healing wounds. Is this a metaphor of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine?
In Unripe Pomegranates (Anar Haye Naras), by the Iranian filmmaker Majid-Reza Mostafavi, we follow the misfortunes of a woman who must deal with her ??husband’s accident. The best of the film is actress Ana Nemati, who bears all the dramatic weight of circumstances, providing a performance full of subtleties, gestures, looks and sensitive expressions.
The same can be said of Isabelle Huppert in the comedy Paris Follies (La Ritournelle), by Marc Fitoussi. The French actress gives dramatic dimension to her character: A woman married to a farmer who, in full marital crisis, decides to travel from the country to Paris, following the possibility of an affair. This is a tale of infidelity without any morals or judgments, a charming comedy that, despite some weaknesses in the script, relies on the shoulder of Huppert who, as always, is in a state of grace.
A female character also leads the action in Beti and Amare, a bizarre film by director Andreas Siege, which is set in Ethiopia in 1936 during the invasion of Mussolini. In this context, a young woman named Beti enters into friendship with an alien who will protect her. It’s an unclassifiable and somewhat confusing movie, but made with an admirably low budget spirit.
In the film of Israel, Haven (Hafsakat Esh), the tense coexistence between two couples during the Second Lebanon War leads to a reflection on future and motherhood, focusing on the figure of Yali, a young woman who cannot have children. The director, Amikam Kovner, offers an intimate look at a political conflict and demonstrates empathy with the dramatic needs of its leading female character.
Finally, a specialist in portraying female loneliness attended the competition: German director Doris Dörrie. Her last film, The Whole Shebang (Alles inklusive), is an ensemble comedy, with dramatic refinements, whose center is a woman — an ex-hippie — vacationing alone in Torremolinos, Spain, where she must confront the ghosts and mistakes of the past.
Martyrs, heroines, dreamers…the Moscow International Film Festival had them all, showing a wide range of women who survive in a world that can still be stifling and unfair.
Edited by Rita di Santo
© FIPRESCI 2014