“Once we were one,” reads a line of poetry by Romanian lyricist, journalist, and translator Nina Cassian, which accompanies Vlad Petri’s ÎNTRE REVOLUȚII like an overarching theme. The poem itself is titled “Mă taie în două” or “Split me in two”. Splitting occurs on very different levels in the film. ÎNTRE REVOLUȚII is first of all the story of a parting. Zahra and Maria, two young medical students, meet at university in Bucharest in the 1970s. Zahra decides to return to her native Iran in 1978, wanting to be part of the massive political upheaval that is forming on the streets and will go down in history a year later as the “Islamic Revolution” that topples the Shah. After their separation, the two friends communicate only through letters for the next few years—until the “next“ revolution, the end of Ceaușescu’s regime in 1989. In the film, this correspondence is read as voice-over to found footage that Vlad Petri has painstakingly sourced from official archives and private sources, much of which has never been seen before.
The two revolutionary movements that bracket the film are similarly stories of breakdown and division. The different forces that were once united by a vision for a new society are soon forced into a religious movement under the leadership of Khomeini, and what was once dubbed the “Iranian Revolution” becomes the “Islamic Revolution.” Civic and left-wing opposition figures, Zahra’s father among them, face repression and persecution; they are considered enemies by the new theocratic state. In a climate of permanent surveillance and suspicion, the only option left for the two women—Zahra in Iran, Maria in Romania—is internal migration and compromise. Maria finds herself in the crosshairs of the Securitate secret police and forced into an unwanted marriage. Even after the fall of Ceaușescu, the promise of the revolution quickly gives way to a feeling of disillusionment: In the world of post-communist capitalism, there are scant traces of beautiful freedom to be found. “I never knew cliffs could be so wild...there is the moon, and the river that tears me in two, I say it again, once we were one...”
ÎNTRE REVOLUȚII is, however, also a film about links and interrelationships—of cross-connections and bonds. Despite the countries between them, the friends remain tightly connected. Their correspondence establishes closeness, creating an intimate space amidst the turmoil of history. The individual biographies of Zahra and Maria are not only interwoven with a chronicle of political developments in Iran and Romania. Their stories also exemplify the experiences of women in those times and in those places—at least the segment of young women who entered university in the ‘70s and were confronted a short time later with the realities of the workplace and the division of the sexes (however differently it may have been structured in their respective countries).
Private and official footage produce differing representations of women—different faces as well as different bodies—and Vlad Petri repeatedly brings these into a dialectical relationship.
Images of women—alone, in pairs, but most of all in the company of other women—are the central visual thread running through the film. They are shown studying, working in factories, passing the time, demonstrating on the streets of Tehran and Bucharest. Private and official footage produce differing representations of women—different faces as well as different bodies—and Vlad Petri repeatedly brings these into a dialectical relationship. In a report from Romanian television on the “Year of Women”, they are seen applying makeup, beating out pillows, ironing, looking after children. “They do what they have always done: They give birth, live happily, work, feel intensely, think, suffer and hope.” The candid footage, on the other hand, captures women somersaulting on a meadow, taking a group trip on a bus, casting hopeful, self-conscious, laughing, but also serious looks into the camera. None of them is Zahra or Maria, and yet Zahra and Maria are present in all these women.
In fact, the letters of the film were penned by Romanian writer and translator Lavinia Braniște and the protagonists are composites of multiple biographies, identities and voices. They are inspired by documents from the files of the secret police as well as the verse of Nina Cassian and Forugh Farrokhzad, whose poem “The Wind Will Carry Us“ (باد ما را خواهد برد), referenced by Abbas Kiarostami in his film of the same name, is recited here. Their words, like the melancholy songs, seep into the archival footage; an atmosphere of loss hangs over everything.
As the film progresses, the focus increasingly shifts to depictions of uniformity and symmetry: absurd Ceaușescu-era parades demonstrating the apparatus of power, grenade-throwing “sisters” in a propaganda film circa the first Gulf War, weeping masses following the death of Khomeini. Zahra’s voice fades almost imperceptibly from the narrative while Maria continues to write: “Where are you now?“ The threads between the women remain unbroken.
Esther Buss lives and works as a film critic in Berlin. Her work has been published in “kolik.film“, “Texte zur Kunst“, “Jungle World“, and “Filmdienst,“ amongst others.
Translation: Hilda Hoy
