While I was working at my Top 50 list of the past decade, I needed to leave aside films I would have loved to write about. The advantage is that I now know which ones of those I initially felt compelled by, those that have shown to have staying power in my mind. Last January we had our yearly Gothenburg Film Festival, of course entirely virtual this time. Of all the films I had the opportunity to watch I would like to recommend four of them that continue to have a strong echo in my head and heart.

• Quo Vadis, Aida? is the Bosnian film director Jasmila Zbanec’s account of the Srebenica massacre in 1995. The story is about Aida, a fictional school teacher from Srebrenica who works as a translator for the UN during wartime. When the Serbian troops invade Srebrenica, the town population is evacuated to a nearby UN shelter where she works. Grasping the dangers of the situation and the powerlessness of the UN security forces, she tries to use her influence to secure safety for her husband and two sons. Aida’s anxieties, panic and shame form the harrowing framing for the events that lead to the brutal, biggest war atrocity in Europe after the second world war.
     
• Conference by the Russian director Ivan I. Tverdovskiy also has a historical background. In this film it is the October 2002 terrorist action of Chechnyan rebels in the Dubrovka theater in Moscow that lead to the loss of 170 lives. Natasha is one of the survivors. After the massacre she became a nun and returns now to help organize the yearly memorial service for the victims of the attack. She is estranged from her family. Her 13-year old son was killed in the massacre. Her daughter blames her for keeping opening old wounds. During the memorial service we find out the darker details of her survival and the reason why it is so important for her to keep remembering. But can you demand from people to keep alive the memory when they want to forget and move on in life?
     
• Beginning is the debut feature film of New York educatedDea Kulumbegashvili from Georgia. It is the story of Yana, the wife of the leader of a Jehovah Witness community. The film starts with an attack by an extremist group during the church service and forms the beginning of the crumbling of Yana’s world, a world in which respect and personal space are missing. The complexity of emotions and the anxieties Yana is struggling with (”life goes by as if I weren’ t there”) deserve further conversation! At least, I was deeply moved by the claustrophobic life Yana had enrolled in and how difficult it had made it for her to know what she wanted.
     
• The Father from French director and writer Florian Zeller is a film that has to be seen if only because of Anthony Hopkins’ brilliant performance as an 80-year old man, slipping further and further into dementia. The film allows us to be in the mind of a man for whom reality becomes more and more uncertain, like a labyrinth he gets lost into. And to feel close to his daughter (Olivia Coleman) who is seeing her beloved father slip into this state. It moved my heart.

Rinus, Apr 2021

*image posted for non commercial purposes under ‘fair use’ of copyright material in recommendation of the film

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