North American Premiere
Stunning archival footage from Iran and Romania serves as the visual backdrop for this sophomore feature from director Vlad Petri. This is an epistolary tale of two fictional women, Zahra and Maria —the former from Iran, and the latter from Romania— who form a bond potentially transcending friendship at the Medicine University in Bucharest in the 1970s. Drawn to the promise of the Iranian Revolution against the Shah, Zahra returns to her home country, leaving Maria behind. She soon grows fearful of the push for an Islamic Republic that sees her intellectual leftist father disappeared. Meanwhile, in Romania, Maria endures increasing hardship and disillusionment under Ceausescu’s tyrannical communist regime. However, neither Maria’s father, nor the watchful eye of the Secret Police, can dissuade her from writing to Zahra. Inspired by documents from the Romanian Secret Police’s archives, Lavinia Braniște’s script —quoting poems by Nina Cassian and Forugh Farrokhzad— weds a haunting lyricism with ever-pertinent themes of longing for freedom from repressive political and patriarchal systems.
Victoria Stoiciu, Ilinca Harnut
Romania/Croatia/Iran
2023
Spectrum
In Romanian and Farsi with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Producer
Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan
Screenwriter
Lavinia Braniște, Vlad Petri
Editor
Dragoș Apetri, Cătălin Cristuțiu, Vlad Petri
Original Music
Filip Sertic
Director
Vlad Petri
Vlad Petri is a director interested in political and social subjects, often mixing personal images with official archives. His films exist at the border between documentary and fiction. His feature, Where Are You Bucharest? (2014) was nominated for Best Feature Film at the Transilvania International Film Festival. Petri’s most recent film, Between Revolutions (2023) received nominations for both the Caligari Film Award, and the Teddy Award, as well as won the FIPRESCI Prize at Berlinale International Film Festival.
Filmography: New Year’s Eve (2008); Where Are You Bucharest? (2014); La Pas Pe Litoral (2016); Journey Around The Home in 60 Days (2020)
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Short Forum 2: Anthropomaxx
Dogs, frogs, hogs, and more!
The Liberation
Haunted by her past, Rita (a magnificent Carrie Coon) is lured to an all-female commune by a magnetic, manipulative spiritual leader (Lily James). An unsettling yet deeply empathetic exploration of personal freedom, devotion, and control.
Image: © Bleecker Street
Tender Loving Care
Mike Leigh’s film depicts the lives of Amy and Rosie, best friends and fellow social workers, who care for the dispossessed with all the strength they have. Sometimes it's funny, tragic, and often it's balancing both, this is a work of humble compassion.
The Story of Documentary Film – The 2010s & 2020s
In The Story of Documentary Film – The 2010s & 2020s, Mark Cousins follows nonfiction into phones, GoPros, YouTube, TikTok, live streams, and feeds to look at bodily autonomy, surveillance, racism, borders, and truth after vérité.
Image: © Fire of Love, 2022, dir. Sara Dosa, Canada, USA, Sandbox Films, Cottage M, Intuitive Pictures, National Geographic Documentary Films
A Girl Unknown
In this tender, compassionate drama, we see the hardships endured by a young girl adopted in the early 1980s during China’s one-child policy. As a teenager in the 90s, she’s still fighting to find a sense of belonging and assert her worth.
Concrete Land
Filmed over eight years, Concrete Land follows the Najar family, one of Jordan’s last Afro-Palestinian-Bedouin families, as luxury villas close in on their grazing space outside Amman. Asmahan Bkerat preserves their way of life in the face of erasure.