“Between Revolutions” by Vlad Petri is a powerful and original political feature-length hybrid documentary film that, through an intimate story about the fates of two women, talks about the position of women in the patriarchal systems of Iran and Romania, societies that experimented with different regimes and in which the repressive political apparatus always functioned at the expense of individuals.
The start of cinema distribution is scheduled for January 18th at Dokukino KIC, while the film will then play in other independent cinemas throughout the country. “Between Revolutions” had its world premiere in February 2023 at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI award for best film. It was crowned with the same award at the Transylvania International Film Festival (TIFF), as well as the award for the best Romanian feature film. The Croatian premiere of the film was held at the ZagrebDox festival in March 2023. The 34th anniversary of the Romanian revolution was marked in December, while the 45th anniversary of the Iranian revolution was marked in January, when the film Between Revolutions arrives in domestic cinemas.
This hybrid film tells the story of Maria, a Romanian, and Zahra, an Iranian, who met in the 1970s while studying together in Bucharest and their passionate correspondence for many years. The two women tirelessly correspond between revolutions, protests and politically turbulent events that have ravaged their countries. Through intriguing and rarely seen archival footage, the intimate epistolary documentary unravels the tangle of collective history, all the hope and disappointment brought by political transformations, and questions social taboos, repression and the position of women in countries where history was written almost exclusively by men. Between Revolutions is a film made from archive footage that shows the lives and destinies of two women, combining them with fictional elements.
The film was produced by the Romanian company Activ Docs, in co-production with the Croatian Restart and the Iranian company Undisclosed. The Croatian co-producer is Oliver Sertić. The producer is Monica Lăzurean-Gorgan (Activ Docs). The film was supported by funds from the Romanian National Film Center CNC and the Croatian Audiovisual Center, with the support of the Doha Film Institute.
