Cate Blanchett's Displacement Film Fund Premieres at Rotterdam Festival
With considerable chutzpah and elan, Cate Blanchett has achieved a geopolitical film-making coup in her capacity as producer and UNHCR Goodwill ambassador. In collaboration with festival authorities in Rotterdam, she has secured funding and commissioned a collection of short films on the subject of displacement from five directors. This anthology, which includes work from Mohammad Rasoulof, now in exile from Iran due to his pro-democracy activism, represents a powerful statement on contemporary exile and displacement.
A Collection of Miniature Artworks
The films are far from solemnly earnest; instead, they form an anthology of five brilliant miniature artworks. By turns shocking, funny, confessional, and deeply mysterious, this is a tremendous collection. The constituent films benefit in some enigmatic way from being shown together, creating a cohesive narrative on 21st-century exile that resonates with intensity and life.
Exploring Diverse Stories of Displacement
Ukrainian film-maker Maryna Er Gorbach presents Rotation, a film about a young Ukrainian woman alone in a wheat field, answering questions about her former life in uniform. Flashbacks reveal her combat experiences, displacing her from civilian existence into the stress and fear of warfare, culminating in a disturbing, apocalyptic vision.
Shahrbanoo Sadat's Super Afghan Gym is a very likable comedy about women of all ages who gather semi-surreptitiously in a Kabul gym to hang out and work out. Inspired by the director's own experience, the film shows fully clothed women exercising earnestly, surrounded by photos of near-naked bodybuilders, while discussing how women don't feel at home in their own bodies.
The horror of war in Syria and the subsequent ordeal of boredom in a refugee hotel in London is the subject of Allies in Exile by Syrian directors Hasan Kattan and Fadi Al-Halabi. The film juxtaposes iPhone footage from the hotel, surrounded by anti-refugee protesters, with terrifying footage from the ruins of Aleppo, focusing on the poignant friendship between the directors.
Somali-Austrian film-maker Mo Harawe's Whispers of a Burning Scent is perhaps the most purely mysterious, following a young keyboard-player in a Mogadishu wedding band arrested for fraud, raising questions about his motives and the fate of the money involved.
Finally, Mohammad Rasoulof's Sense of Water offers an agonising account of an exiled Iranian writer in Germany who falls in love with his translator, grappling with what it means to become fluent in German and possibly lose his Farsi, questioning if he will translate himself out of existence.
A Collective Hit for the Festival
Each film bristles with intensity and life, possessing the ambition and accomplishment of a feature-length work. They collectively represent a significant achievement for the Rotterdam film festival, showcasing the power of short films to address profound themes of displacement, identity, and exile in the modern world.
