Pera Film focuses on ‘Women on Borders’

ISTANBUL

The films in the Pera Museum’s film program focus on the subject of women and migration. ‘The Reader, a deep love story,’ is one of those selected films.

Pera Film in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration in Istanbul is presenting “Women on Borders,” a series of films to be screened until Nov. 17, focusing on the subject of women and migration.

The selected films delve into a survey of strong female characters and their stories.

One of these films explores mature women or adolescent characters torn between their countries, home and exile, while other films discover the emotional ups and downs and journey that the female protagonist undergoes.
 
Films on screen

Among the films, “A Separation,” is a powerful, complex Iranian drama centering on a conflict that cuts across boundaries of gender and class, traditions, justice, and male-female relationships in modern Iran. “The Reader,” an exemplary piece of filmmaking explores the nature of guilt and the lengths that the human spirit can go when confronted with deep and horrifying truths. A hushed and haunting meditation on these knotty questions, the film is sorrowful and shocking, yet lightens with a deep love story that is really at the heart of this film.

 In “Beyond the Hills,” which is based on actual events, director Cristian Mungiu confirms the skill of portraying female friendship with great empathy through a psycho-spiritual drama in which two women who grew up in the same orphanage reunite years after.

The last two films of the program are presented in collaboration with the l’Institut français; “Hands Up,” a film about Milana, who remembers her life as a young Chechen immigrant in Paris, struggling for a better life; and “Louise Wimmer,” a film about 50-year-old Louise who is forced to call her car her home after her life is turned upside down due to a painful separation and an unexpected crisis that leave her immersed in debt and render her homeless.