VLAD PETRI: ‘Between Revolutions is a film constructed exclusively from archives, which holds up a mirror to the lives and destinies of two women, university colleagues and friends, one from Romania and the other from Iran. I was born in 1979, the year of the revolution in Iran against the Shah’s dictatorship, and I was ten years old when the Romanian revolution took place. The two events were for me a sort of mileposts, historical reference points.

‘In this film, I have used archive images and documents, but also fictional elements. The letters presented are written by Lavinia Braniște, and are inspired by declassified documents from the Securitate archives. Also incorporated in the letters are quotations from the poems of two important feminist writers: Nina Cassian from Romania and Forugh Farrokhzad from Iran.

‘It is a film that presents a subjective history, from a feminine perspective, about two societies thousands of kilometres apart that have both experienced political systems in which people were crushed by oppressive state apparatus. It is a topical film also from the point of view of the street movements in Iran, where women are again fighting for their rights and longing for an equitable society, just as they were in 1979. Their cry in our times expresses the aspiration of the two characters, Maria and Zahra: “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi!” – “Woman, Life, Freedom!”’

Vlad Petri is a film director with an interest in social and political subjects, who often combines personal images with official archives. His filmography includes: Între revoluții (‘Between revolutions’), 2023, feature length; Același vis (‘The same dream’), 2021, short; Cerbul a trecut prin fața mea (‘The deer passed in front of me’), 2020, short; and București, unde ești? (‘Where are you, Bucharest?), 2014, feature length.