frame[o]ut 2023: Între Revoluții / Between Revolutions

RO/HR/QA/IR 2023, Docufiction, 69 min., OV with english subtitles
Director: Vlad Petri
Starring: Victoria Stoiciu, Ilinca Harnut

In Bucharest in the late 1970s, friends Maria and Zahra study together at the Medical University. When the Iranian revolution overthrows the Shah in 1979, Zahra, an Iranian, drops out of her studies and returns to Tehran full of revolutionary ambitions. Over the years, an exchange of letters unfolds between the two, recounting women's struggles, promising upheavals and repressive regimes in both countries. The unspoken words between the lines of letters tell of a closeness and tenderness that goes beyond friendship. Told visually exclusively through impressive archival footage from Romania and Iran, author Lavinia Braniste and filmmaker Vlad Petri weave together rarely seen contemporary documents into a fictional correspondence. "You need imagination in order to imagine a future that does not exist" is quoted at the beginning of the film Azar Nafisi. With "Between Revolutions", Petri imagines a past in order to let us continue to dream a future in the present.

Vlad Petri is a film director, cinematographer, screenwriter and producer. After studying cinematography at the University of Theater and Film Bucharest, he completed an MA degree in Visual and Media Anthropology at the Free University of Berlin. He worked as a cinematographer and festival curator. In recent years he has focused on film directing, with a particular interest in social and political issues, especially Middle Eastern and Eastern Europe. His films, bordering between documentary and fiction, have been shown at international film festivals such as Rotterdam, Sarajevo and Jihlava. He won three Romanian GOPO Awards - for best debut (2015) and best short film (2021 and 2022).

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