Photo courtesy of © Zachary Reese
The Viewing Booth
The Viewing Booth by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz
In its third day, the Berlinale continues its high crop of feminine-driven movie releases with two of its most challenging and affecting offerings. Starting with one from Forum and the next from this year's Panorama section, both have the power to dramatically alter your point of view.
First up is The Viewing Booth, a documentary into the effects of watching frontline videos and how it can affect a viewer's perception of a given situation. Taking as it’s inspiration a letter once written to Virginia Woolf about "how we could stop war’", her sage response was to ask how anyone could agree on who ‘we’ are.
Running with this conflict of objectivity, filmmaker Ra'anan Alexandrowicz invites seven Jewish American viewers into a viewing booth to watch a selection of forty videos made about life in the occupied West Bank. Twenty videos support the Israeli position and the others would show life from the Palestinian perspective. However, once his investigation starts, it quickly emerges there's really only one candidate who fascinates: Maia Levy.
A passionate supporter of the Israel, Maia sifts through the videos, some of which she’s already seen and some of which that are new to her and in doing so, her perceptions of a presented reality come into sharp relief.
Asked to describe out loud what she believes she's seeing, her reactions are peppered with the language of distrust. In particular, when watching a night-time raid by masked Israeli soldiers, Maia picks apart the imagery of the video from a mostly polarised standpoint. Rationalising the soldiers' intrusion through the filter of her own prejudices, it quickly becomes apparent that she can only articulate what she sees either in terms of either entertainment or a deliberate attempt to misinform. Shifting between the assumptions that the video has been staged or edited to present a sympathetic case, Maia's reactions become a piercing mirror to her own deeply-held beliefs.
Tellingly towards the end of The Viewing Booth Ra'anan Alexandrowicz invites Maia back to show her reactions to the previous videos. Will she intrinsically distrust her own reactions compared to her initial impressions? The answer is as chilling as it is opaque. In admitting that maybe all she’s looking for is "lies", it becomes clear that she sees front-line videos as a test. Rather than dispelling her assumptions, they have instead become an ideological assault course for which her to test herself against.
Intentionally cold, and brutalist in its filming, The Viewing Booth is an arresting, splintering of the truths we tell ourselves and the warm assurances we wrap them in and it needs to be seen to believed.
Photo courtesy of © Agat Films & Cie, Arte France, Final Cut for Real
Petite Fille
Petite fille | Little Girl by Sébastien Lifshitz
From the other side of the cinematic looking glass, comes director Sébastien Lifshitz's similarly affecting Petite Fille where a French family's love sees no gender.
Growing up in modern-day France, eight-year-old Sasha dreams of being a girl. However, though not through choice, she has been born inside the body of a boy.
Interspersed with heart-felt interviews and intimate scenes of access, like where Sasha's mother tearfully blames herself for wanting a daughter so much that she feels responsible for Sasha's transgender identity, Petite Fille that dispels a multitude of transphobic myths and around the subject of gender dysphoria. Too effeminate for the boys, too masculine for the girls, Sasha beatific presence is on the cusp of every conversation that few want to have. So, when her school principal and their staff cowardly hide behind a barrage of bureaucratic protestations, it is truly heart-warming to see that her parents and two brothers unequivocally have her back. That said, this isn't an issue that's going to go away as Sasha gets older.
Afraid to be seen wearing dresses by other school children, Sasha's mother decides to take her to Paris to see a specialist. Welling up with tears that she can't even let fall even in the presence of two supportive adults, it becomes plain that it's not really the children that struggle with her identity but the adults.
In the end, all Sasha wants is to be seen the way she sees herself. However, the chance for any kind of childhood for her is disappearing fast. Always obliged to be step one behind the girls in her ballet class, Sasha is at risk of being labelled a flightless swan tethered to the ground by adult concerns.
Commendably taking its time to move between each member of Sasha's family, Petite Fille is a damning yet sanguinely uplifting glimpse into a shuttered existence. Framed in the pastel-coloured of her assembled toys, Sasha's mother knows this is only the beginning of many future rejections to come - and for that reason alone, it is vital that you visit her Petite Fille now before that world can take a hold of her.