Month: February 2018

Unsane

Posted on by victorfraga

Sawyer Valentini (Claire Foy) has recently relocated from Boston to Pennsylvania. She looks a like a credible and successful young woman, with a good job and elegant attire. One day she meets a handsome guy from Tinder and takes him home. Suddenly, she snaps. And we realise that something isn’t entirely right. Is Sawyer just being ultra-cautious following a dangerous and traumatic experience with a past partner, or she simply neurotic and insane?

She visits a psychiatric facility in order to discuss her fears, and says that she’s fleeing a stalker. She also reveals that she occasionally has suicidal thoughts, but has never carried out any attempts. She’s suddenly locked up against her will. At first, she’s not entirely sure what’s happening. A patient says that she’s the victim of insurance fraud (the organisation will be claiming money from her insurer). Sawyer claims that her stalker is one of the psychiatrists, but no one takes her seriously. Is it possible that she’s telling the truth, and that she’s a genuine victim of bizarre combination of stalking and gaslighting?

At first, Unsane feels like a effective psychological drama with a lot of depth, akin to Soderbergh’s previous film Solaris (2002) and Bubble (2005). The iPhone images lend the movie a tense quality: could it be that the poor resolution of the images mirror Sawyer’s mental state? But then roughly halfway through the 98-minute film, it begins to morph into a banal action thriller and then finally into a slasher/shocker. Plus, some narrative devices are disjointed and unnecessary, such as the use of the colour blue (the film starts with an outdoors sequence in blue, then the colour appears again in a dress and a solitary confinement facility, but I have absolutely no idea what Soderbergh is trying to say).

The political message of insurance fraud and failed capitalism also feels extremely drab. Plus, the portrayal of the psychiatric facility as a dysfunctional and hellish madhouse run by greedy crooks and populated with dangerous and unpleasant patients won’t do any favours to people and organisations dealing with the burden and the stigma of mental health.

Maybe this could be a film satisfactory enough for a first-time director still developing their language and style, but not for a film veteran Steven Soderbergh with several masterpieces of psychological drama already under his belt. Ultimately, Unsane feels UNmatured and UNdeveloped.

Unsane showed in the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, March 23rd. On various VoD platforms, including Mubi, in May 2023.

If you wish to find out more about mental health problems and their treatment, please click here.

Becoming Astrid (Unga Astrid)

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Danish filmmaker Pernille Fischer Christensen paints a beautiful picture of Swedish children’s writer Astrid Lindgren, best known for the book series featuring Pippi Longstocking. Smart, delicate and superbly shot, Becoming Astrid bonds the talent of a director with her subject (both Scandinavian women are writers, and Christensen also co-wrote the screenplay), projecting a message of female resilience and sorority.

Becoming Astrid takes us back in time nearly 100 years to the 1920s, and into Astrid’s personal life and her very own private struggle for equality as a young woman. There is no outright feminist rhetoric, the female message is far more subtle yet pervasive. The entire film precedes the creation of the famous characters Pippi Longstocking or Karlson-on-the-roof.

Young Astrid becomes pregnant from a relationship with her chief editor Reinhold Bloomberg. Her mother demands that she acts in accordance with her strict religious values. Astrid gives birth in Copenhagen, leaving her baby son with Danish foster mother Marie (played by Trine Dyrholm, who won the Golden Bear two years ago) until she is able to collect him. Finally, she decides to take care of herself and her son Lasse on her own.

The film is shaped by Astrid’s relationship to two women. She finds solace with the kind Marie, while her mother only offers her harshness and bitterness. We observe Astrid fighting for acceptance as a single young mother through the dialogue with these two females. She experiences a world of sensations coming from both extremes of the female spectrum: a kind a motherly figure versus an unloving and un-motherly mother.

Alba August interprets Astrid Lindgren, a shining opportunity for a rising actor. Helmer and scribe Christensen constructs a dignified portrayal of a strong woman, without resorting to melodramatic devices. Astrid is neither a hero nor a victim, but simply a human being in development. This co-production between Sweden, Denmark and Germany has blockbuster potential, and yet it retains its humanistic and poetic core.

Becoming Astrid is showing at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival taking place right, as part of the Berlinale Special section.

Ága

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You’d be forgiven for thinking this is a documentary. Ága goes so deep into the lives of reindeer herder Nanook and his wife Sedna that you will be surprised to find out that they are played by actors Mikhail Aprosimov and Feodosia Ivanova. The elderly couple dwells in a very primitive tent somewhere extremely icy and remote with their loyal husky, and they speak a language never identified in the movie.

Every single frame in Ága is an art piece in itself. The quality of the images is superb, the colours and the details are literally jaw-dropping. The ability to photograph ice and snow is remarkable. The movie starts the image of the white tundra blending seamlessly into the foggy sky. You will experience snow blindness for a few moments. Next you will be invited into Nanook’s and Sedna’s house, which is dark and cosy, lined with animal leather and fur. There are few tools and bare essentials for their survival lying around, and nothing else. Killing animals is an integral part of their lives, as they rely on their meat for nourishment and their hide for insulation.

The sound engineering is also spectacular. You will hear the knife cutting through the fish, the drill breaking through the ice, the wind blowing and the dog whining with astounding clarity. Plus Mahler’s 5th symphony gives the film a gentle and soothing touch.

The plot is extremely simple. Nanook and Sedna have a daughter called Ága who left in order to work in a mine. Sedna longs for her, but her husband refuses to talk about the subject, presumably holding a major grudge. Instead they talk about their mundane yet arduous life, as well as their dreams. Sedna is very ill with a major wound in her belly, to which she applies ointment apparently to no avail. She’s dying, it seems. Should she see her daughter one final time before she meets her maker? And what will happen to her husband if she passes away? Will he be able to fend for himself in almost complete isolation, alone with the husky?

This is an almost entirely laconic and sensory film, yet never tedious. Verbal communication is sparse, yet there’s no shortage of palpable sentiments. The images are factual (they are not dream sequences), yet teeming with poetry. The vastness of the tundra is breathtaking, the ice roads never-ending, and the depth of the mining site borderline unfathomable. Likewise the emotional depth of the candid story. Plus you’re in for an orgasmic visual feast in the end of the film, with an aerial shot unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

It will come as a surprise to many that this is a German-Bulgarian movie spoken in Yakutian, and filmed somewhere in the Sakha Republic (in East Siberia, not too far from Alaska). The director is Bulgarian, and the music is performed by the Orchestra of Sofia. A singular piece of filmmaking. Ága is part of the official selection of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival taking place right now, but it’s running out of competition.

Eldorado

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Markus Imhoof was just a little boy when his family welcomed a young Italian refugee named Giovanna into their home in Switzerland during WW2. Back then, Europe was in tatters, and the most vulnerable people came from within the continent, and not from across the Mediterranean. Nowadays, most refugees arriving in the wealthy Alpine nation come from sub-Saharan Africa. The colour of their skin is very different to Giovanna, yet their predicament has many similarities.

Both Giovanna and these Black refugees are seeking to reach the wealthiest and safest parts of Europe, and they are both fleeing violence. Most of these people come from the horn of Africa, particularly Ethiopia and Eritrea, countries still healing from civil conflicts and an independence war less than two decades ago. They arrive in Europe mostly via Italy – incidentally the country that colonised their nations in the 20th century.

The titular Eldorado is Switzerland and everything else north of it in Europe. A place of great abundance. There’s also a religious way of seeing it, as a refugee explains: Africa/ the Mediterranean is hell, Southern Europe (Italy) is purgatory and the rest above it is heaven. Imhoof cleverly sows together old letters and photos of Giovanna with dramatic images of EU ships rescuing refugees from overcrowded makeshift boats in the Mediterranean and the aftermath as they attempt to settle in Italy and Switzerland. These people were made to pay €1,500 per head by smugglers, we are informed.

There is one small piece of information that is very significant, particularly in the context of a film festival. Refugees are asked to step on a small red carpet in order to clean their shoes. Unbeknownst to them, the foot which they use (left or right) will determine their country of a destination. In festivals such as Berlin, Cannes and Venice, a red carpet is used to welcome film stars and celebrities. It is a place to shine. Here, the red carpet is a place of division, and it’s and symbolic the powerlessness of the refugee, entirely vulnerable to random circumstances.

The film ending is very powerful, as a tragic twist is revealed and the director makes an unequivocal statement about the nature of immigration, using an image of the globe with migratory routes in order to illustrate movement.

My only reservation about the film is that the camera is sometimes a little invasive, even if Imhoof is very well intentioned. Refugees demand not to be filmed at the “Ghetto” (a very precarious refugee camp in Italy), but images are still captured by a hidden camera. Plus the images of a family being denied entry in Switzerland, including a small girl having a tantrum, made me feel a little uncomfortable and question the boundaries of documentary-making.

Eldorado showed in the Competition (out of competition) of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It premieres in the UK as part of the BFI London Film Festival taking place between October 10th and 21st.

Ex-Shaman (Ex Pajé)

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History repeats itself again and again. Ex-Shaman portrays the destruction of the tribe Paiter Surui’s, similar to what happened to other tribes in Brazil when colonised by Europeans more than 500 years ago. Deforestation, the outright killing of indigenous people and modern technology are all topics of the film, but not its main focus. The most fierce attack on the Paiter Surui is the deconstruction of their culture and beliefs through evangelisation.

The priests – which epitomise the very soul of the coloniser – “educate” (ie. convert) the indigenous people into Christians, promoting a duel between good and evil. Shamanism needs to be erased in order for the tribe to receive its blessing from Jesus Christ, and also in order to vouch for a place in Heaven. “I heard from a priest that shamans are from hell” says protagonist Perpera Surui, the titular ex-shaman.

Perpera lives his life completely surrounded by elements of modern civilisation. Film director and scriptwriter Luiz Bolognesi delves into the life of the tribe and its different generations identifying the effects of time since the tribe’s first contact with the outside world in 1969. In just two years, the tribe lost 200 of its 750 members to infections, viruses and illnesses brought in by the explorers.

The interaction gradually defaced their old customs. They now cook on stoves, have electricity and use mosquito nets while sleeping. The difference between 1969 and now is staggering and revolting. The ethnocide film is still happening without interference from the Brazilian government and other institutions. The film raises a question: what can we do in to order to stop this phenomenon and restore the dignity of the indigenous people?

The director explained in the Q&A that he faced restrictions on what he could shoot, without going into details. Bolognesi acts as a visual anthropologist without making judgements, finding the right balance so that he doesn’t make the tribe even more vulnerable. In the words of the director: “The film portrays the Brazilian indigenous experience of today from the inside out. It stays far away from romantic clichés”. It’s a film about solidarity with indigenous people and those fighting the cause. But it’s also a film about despair. Ex-Shaman urges people to stand up against injustice and ethnocide.

Ex-Shaman showed in the Panorama section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in February, when this piece was originally written. It premieres in the UK in June, as part of the Sheffield Doc/Fest.

Dark River

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Following in the thematic footsteps of Hope Dickson Leach’s The Levelling (2017) and Francis Lee’s God’s Own Country (2017), Clio Barnard’s Dark River offers itself as a comparative text, ensuring a verisimilitude depiction of life in rural Britain. As Alice, actor Ruth Wilson offers a delicateness to a woman haunted by her past, to which is heightened by the director’s choice to merge Alice’s past and present together, resulting in pastness projecting itself into her adult life.

After her father’s death, Alice is obligated to travel back to her family’s Yorkshire farm after 15 years away – her movement elicited through the wide lenses and frames of Barnard and her cinematographer Adriano Goldman. As a means, she faces an uphill emotional and physical battle to restore some working order to the farm after her brother Joe (Mark Stanley) and father (Sean Bean) neglected its running. Only seen through Alice’s perspective, Sean Bean’s physicality imbues the frame with a Gothic quality; in every corner, he lingers. Locked over a tenancy dispute, the brother and sister’s financial woes overspill into their relationship.

Reflective of brother’s and sister’s peculiar familial dynamics, both Wilson and Stanley convey the difficulties of family. They offer equal levels of sobriety in the presents juxtaposed to their predominantly youthful joy in flashbacks. Delivered to the audience in the transitions of editing, instigated by movement, such recollections wield a vitality to Alice’s experiences. Specifically, in Wilson’s acting, the hardships of her character’s life are elicited in a subdued quality. With a withdrawn presence, this can thus lead to moments of lengthy tedium.

Driving the narrative, her strength to tirelessly pursue restoring the family farm “as it t’was when me ma and nanna ran it” is all the more compelling in the face of the pastness. Coming from a place of angry and deep emotional upset Joe is portrayed with a threatening aggression from Stanley. Still, the rationale behind all this is clearly alluded towards by Barnard’s writing.

A cinematic template of Andrea Arnold Wuthering Heights (2011), there is only so much that Dark River can do to depict the Yorkshire Moors. In the recent release of God’s Own Country, having a handful of moderately contemporary equals is to the determent of Dark River. Holding a lack of finesse or fresh takes, the social realism unfolds in a strained manner. Granted, in the final act, some cinematic flair is uncovered through the submergence of Alice and Joe – in the edit – into the land, one cannot help but feel a little underwhelmed at the overly dramatic ending. The titular dark river submerges and suffocates its conclusion.

Upheld by the riveting performance familial, Dark River offers characters who feel fully fleshed out in amongst a tedious storyline. Continuing a recent British cinematic trend of focusing away from suburbia city life towards rural communities, Barnard’s third feature film can be merited on its understandings of human emotions, less can be said about submerging the audience’s attention in its titular river of the abyss, however.

Dark River is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, February 23rd, and on VoD on Monday, June 18th.

The Trial (O Processo)

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The world is blithely unaware of the coup d’état that took place in largest country of Latin America in 2016. Most people outside Brazil assume that the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff was a legitimate process in accordance with the country’s constitution. Many think that Dilma was involved in some sort of corruption scandal and that her removal was an entirely bona fide process. The 137-minute documentary The Trial reveals the details of a process so absurd that it’s akin to Kafka’s eponymous novel, which is mentioned the film. The book tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote authority, with the nature of his crime remaining a mystery. Not too to different to what happened to Dilma.

The movie starts with the early proceedings in March 2016. We learn that the impeachment is in fact a gesture of retaliation by the Speaker of the Lower House Eduardo Cunha, because the Workers’ Party (Dilma’s party) refused to shield him from a corruption investigation. The film then shows many of the speeches in the Brazilian Congress, from congressmen vote for and against the impeachment. People from both sides of the political spectrum are displayed, ranging from LGBT and human rights champion Jean Wyllys to ultra-right wing and torture apologist Jair Bolsonaro.

Dilma was suspended on May 8th, but the proceedings continued until the end of August, when she was permanently removed from office. Brazilian director Maria Ramos closely follows several senators both pro and against the impeachment, as well as Dilma’s defense lawyer José Eduardo Cardozo and his nemesis, the indictment lawyer Janaína Paschoal. She captures behind-the-scenes moments, as these people engage in meetings, talk on their phones and drive around Brazil’s capital, Brasília.

This is not an easy film to watch. For Brazilians, it means remembering what’s perhaps their most painful historical event since the return to democracy in the 1980s (after a military dictatorship). For foreigners, the details of the bizarre process, the vast technical lexicon and enormous quantity of names and faces may be a little difficult to grasp. But the message will be clear. Dilma was indicted due to an accounting technicality called fiscal pedalling, widely practised in every government. To add insult to injury, the rapporteur of the impeachment process senator Anastasia was a “fiscal pedlar” himself, and far more prolific than Dilma. The cards were rigged all along, and the defense arguments were falling on deaf ears.

Ramos opted not to do any talking heads interviews and to remain behind the camera throughout the film, in order to make her piece as impartial and factual as possible. But the facts speak for themselves. At one point, Ramos plays the audio of a leaked telephone conversation between a coup mongering senator Romero Juca and an oil tradesman Sergio Machado. The two men talk about removing Dilma as being the only way of “stopping the bleeding”, in reference to blocking corruption investigations that they were facing. They also talked about “a big agreement with the Supreme Tribunal” in order to stage the coup. The writing is on the wall.

The film wraps up with the aftermath of the coup. You will see images of violent police oppression against peaceful demonstrations, only for the camera to move up and zoom into a thick cloud of grey smoke, presumably left by tear gas bombs. We are then told that illegitimate president Temer has since frozen public spend in education and healthcare for 20 years, removed workers’ rights and lifted the ban on foreign companies to operate in the Brazilian oil business, all ingredients of a extreme neo-liberal agenda aligned with US interests.

The Trial premiered at the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in February, when this piece was originally written. The film received a standing ovation that lasted nearly 10 minutes, the largest one I have ever witnessed at the Festival (which I have attended eight times). This is a powerful venting outlet and denunciation tool for Brazilians who feel that they have been denied a voice in the mainstream media. It is available on Mubi in August/September 2020. On Netflix in July 2021.

When Trees Fall (Koly Padayut Dereva)

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Larysa (Anastasia Putovit) is young, good-looking and intoxicated with sexual desire. When Trees Fall opens with a fairy tale sequence in which Larysa makes passionate love to her handsome criminal boyfriend Scar (Maksym Samchyk) on the boggy swamp, complete with fog and thick mud where the two lovers revel and roll naked. For some reason, her little sister Vitka is nearby.

It’s never entirely clear whether the action took place or it was just a dream. One way or the other, Larysa in woken by her formidable grandmother spraying her with a hose. She’s then reprimanded for having spent time with Scar, whose prison stints are well known in the village. The grandmother often abuses the two females, locking Larysa in a room and calling her a “slut”, and often referring to the little girl as “wicked child”. There’s nothing maternal and babooshka-like about her. Larysa’s mother is equally unloving and crude. Plus there is enormous social pressure for her to marry a man whom she doesn’t love, but could offer her stability.

The little Vitka is no stranger to dreaming her life. away She often imagines a white horse and giant vegetables in some fantasy land, when the images suddenly become grainy and low contrast. The first-time director Marysia Nikitiuk is extremely dexterous with the camera and the lenses used. The images are never tacky and boring. In reality, they are genuinely impressive for someone so early in their film career. The idyllic settings of rural and impoverished Ukraine are also intense and dramatic. The colours are sharp and vivid. There’s a very Slavonic touch to the photography, and it reminded me a lot of masters such as Tarkovsky, Zvyagentsev, Sokurov and her countryman Sergei Loznitza. Except for the last sequence of film, which was a little too extravagant for my taste.

On the other hand, the film script is not as sophisticated. The topic of being in love with a wrongdoer and having to marry someone else is hardly original, and the director hardly aggregates anything new to it. The topics of masculinity and violence are also present in the movie, but they are not developed in too much depth. Overall, this is still a movie worth seeing for the impressive visuals. And Nikitiuk is a name to keep an eye on!

When Trees Fall is showing as part of the Panorama section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, which is taking place right now.

Tranny Fag (Bixa Travesty)

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Linn da Quebrada (“Broken Linn da”) is neither a woman nor a man. She’s not your conventional transsexual, either. She’s something between all of these identities. She’s a tranny fag, a term she coined herself. Linn da doesn’t conform to labels and pre-established orthodoxies. She’s deliciously subversive. She’s a beautiful aberration. She’s unabashedly confrontational, yet she’s tender and affectionate.

This doc follows the footsteps of the 27-year-old Brazilian singer, who only recently rose to fame. You will watch her stage performances and read her deeply transgressive lyrics, translated into English in the subtitles. The highly intelligent and eloquent artist composes songs dealing with gender fluidity, and describes her own body as a political instrument. She’s an outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, and Magnus Hirschfeld would undoubtedly be proud of her. “Sit down, macho man, and watch your own destruction”, she cries out in her signature song Bixa Preta (“Black Faggot”). She’s a mental, black faggot from the favela, and yet no one is going to laugh as she walks down the streets on her high heels, she explains. She’s like nothing else you have ever seen.

The film also follows her private life, including intimate conversations with her mother, who’s fully supportive or her work and identity. The two shower together and rub soap on each other’s naked bodies, while also washing each other’s knickers, in one of the films most tender and intimate moments (there’s nothing sexual and incestuous in the delicate relation). Such moments were only possible because Linn da helped to pen the film script, grating the filmmakers more access into her private life. The movie also has fictional moments, but neither Linn da nor the two directors will disclose what those are.

We also learn that she recently survived testicle cancer, and we see very explicit images of her body while in hospital receiving treatment. She spreads her legs and wears lipstick, and rips off her hair in front of the camera (which is coming off due to the side effects of the chemotherapy). This is one of the most subversive scenes I have ever seen in cinema/arts, perhaps comparable to Annie Sprinkle having sex with dying Aids patients in New York hospitals during the 1980s.

Linn da believes that her strength emanates from her anus. That’s where you have to look at if you want to get to know someone, she clarifies. And you too will see a very detailed image of her orifice in the film (and just about every inch of her male body), and from various angles. Incidentally, this isn’t the only Brazilian film being released in Europe this month that reclaimed the anus in a very positive light. Tavinho Teixeira’s Sol Alegria describes the anus as a weapon “more powerful than 70,000 rifles, 100,000 cannons and any chemical you will ever see”.

Voices and bodies such as Linn da’s are urgent in an increasingly reactionary Brazil. The country saw a coup d’état two years ago and is currently governed by criminals and religious fundamentalists. The director Kiko said in Q&A after the movie that he expects to see retaliation and protests outside cinemas when the film gets released later this year in Brazil.

Tranny Fag showed in the Panorama section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in February, when this piece was originally written. The same city that were Magnus Hirschfeld based his sexology practice nearly 100 years ago. It premieres in the UK in June as part of the Sheffield Doc Fest, and it will also show at the ICA on Jun 15th, followed by a short season in selected UK cinemas.

Kinshasa Makambo

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Democracy is a rather elusive concept in countries used to political instability and illiberalism. This is particularly true of African nations that first became independent in the 20th century. And this is particularly true of the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo-Kinshaha, the former Zaire). Technically a democracy, the current President Joseph Kabila simply refuses to budge. He keeps procrastinating and postponing elections by simply arguing that the country isn’t ready yet. And so the people have decided to rebel.

Jean Marie, Christian, Ben and a few others form a small cell aimed at instilling unrest in an attempt to force Kabila to call elections. They support the country’s leader of opposition and former Prime Minister Etienne Tshisekedi. Taking to their streets in their priority, where they will try to convert new recruits and confront the repressive police forces with their precarious weapons and Dieudo Hamadi’s camera (the director doesn’t claim to be part of the rebel movement, but he’s indeed very sympathetic, and there is little doubt that the film equipment is a a very powerful weapon).

The images of this extremely impoverished and civil war-ridden country are harrowing. The streets of Kinshasa are littered, and open sewers are a common feature. But it’s the sheer violence that’s most shocking. You will see a man being lynched, armed protesters arguing with the police and the inevitable aftermath: corpses of adults and children lying on the streets. You will also learn about the different types of tear gas, and how to protect yourself from such chemicals: use a plastic bottle cut in half as a mask and rub large chunks of butter around your eyes and your face (as pictured above).

Tragically, Tshisekedi died while abroad in Brussels in February last year, leaving his supporters shocked and disorientated. Some of the men give up the struggle, one of them returns to exile abroad, and another one is arrested by the secret police. The history of the country is no less disastrous. Their independence leader Lumumba was assassinated decades earlier, and presidents have a history of clinging on to power for as long as possible since. Mobutu was in office for 32 years, while Kabila has already been in power for more than half of that (17 years).

The message at the end of the film is daunting. It’s unclear who will pick up the pieces of the rebel movement. The sense of dissatisfaction of longing for democracy, however, does not die out. It’s just a question of time before rebels begin to fight again.

Kinshasa Makambo showed in the Panorama section of the 68th Berlin International Film Festival in February, when this piece was originally written. It shows at the Sheffield Doc Fest in June.

Lemonade (Luna de Miere)

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How far would you go for your green card? How much is the American dream worth? Romanian nurse Mara (Mălina Manovici) wants to settle in the US because she feels that the country could offer her and her 10-year-old child Dragos more opportunities than her homeland. She isn’t fleeing poverty or war. She came to the US in a work placement for six months, and then succeed to marry one of her patients. She’s well trained and educated. But she’s soon to discover that the “Land of the Free” isn’t quite ready to welcome her with open arms.

The film opens with an immigration officer interviewing Mara, who’s seeking to obtain a green card.. The questions are incredibly intrusive and awkward. Mara is asked to describe how she met her husband Daniel, and to share her feelings about him. She’s also questioned about trivialities of her life, as to why she sleeps with cotton in her ears. She explains “that’s an European, maybe even a Romanian thing” used in order to protect her teeth from a draught of wind. It feels a lot like a court hearing without the presumption of innocence. It looks like the officer is hellbent on finding the real reason why this immigrant came to his wonderful “America”, as he doesn’t seem to believe that love is a reason sufficient enough. Mara answers all the questions with relative calm and confidence

A second interview takes place in the movie, and the conversation begins to take a sinister turn. Mara has to talk about her allegiance to the US, and even disclose details of a sexual nature about her relationship with Daniel. The officer explains that Americans worked hard, and therefore he can’t let foreigners into the country without very thorough scrutiny. Even those who hate “America” want to live there, he claims. And so he makes an absurd demand. That’s when Mara begins to lose her cool.

Mara comes from a country riddled with corruption. She thought “things were different in the US”, she confides to her Serbian lawyer (who entered the US on a Bosnian passport, suggesting he too is used to dodging and dribbling the law). Her husband also seems to have vested interests. He suffered an accident, and is struggling to make ends meet. Mara is attempting to sell some property in Romania, and maybe this money would be convenient for Daniel. Just maybe. Or maybe he loves Mara indeed?

Lemonade denounces bigotry, xenophobia and a bureaucratic immigration system subjected to personal whims, often leaving applicants feeling vulnerable, patronised and humiliated. It also exposes the sheer ignorance of American authorities. Mara has to explain to her officer that her ear, nose and throat are connected, and clarify to policemen that Romanian is not an Arab language. But this is not a Manichaean film, either. Mara is not portrayed as pure and naive. She is simply pragmatic. While she insists that she loves her husband and they are genuinely involved in a romantic relationship, she’s also clear about the fact that there is a trade-off, and both parties benefit from the arrangement.

Lemonade showed in the 68th Berlin International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It premieres in the UK at the 38th Cambridge Film Festival, taking place October 25th to November 1st. The film was produced by the talented Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, best known for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) and The Graduation (2015).