IFFK 2024: on erasure of geographical and gender identities

A scene from When the Phone Rang.

Not a single frame of violence exists in Serbian filmmaker Iva Radivojevic’s film When the Phone Rang, although it is set in the context of war and the erasure of a country. Yet, it makes one feel the searing pain of dislocation through the memory vignettes of a 11-year-old girl, who is supposed to be the filmmaker’s younger self.

The film screened in the Female Gaze section on the opening day of the 29th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) begins from a phone call, attended by young Lana. Although it is a very personal call, informing the family of her grandfather’s death, her grownup self identifies that whole period of turmoil and migration with the phone call. It all plays out in 1992, around the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which sent thousands of families fleeing from their homes.

The phone call and a wall clock which shows 10.36 a.m., the time of the phone call, appears repetitively as a signifier of each fragmented memory that she recollects. Her memories are not of the weighty geopolitical matters happening around her, but the regular, warm memories of the growing up years, of the silly games she plays with a friend by following random strangers, of the grainy VHS tapes and of the Eric Satie piano tunes she plays through the phone for her friend, all captured in that grainy, nostalgic colour tone of the early 1990s. It almost feels like a heartfelt stock-taking of all the simple pleasures that many like her lost one fine day.

The country which is being erased, and from which people are fleeing, is never explicitly mentioned, but there are enough hints thrown in. In a way, that choice to not mention is fitting in a universal story which easily resonates with people in the war-torn parts of the world currently. Working on a shoestring budget, filmmaker and screenwriter Radivojevic also has edited and composed the dreamy soundscape for the film.

Erasure of gender identity

If erasure of a country is the basis of Radivojevic’s film, Jean-Claude Monod’s Girl for a Day is based on a real life story of the erasure of a person’s gender identity in 18th century France. Anne’s life transforms when she confesses to a priest about feeling attracted towards another woman. The priest instructs her to live the rest of her life as a man, an order which she is bound to follow in the tight-knit community of those times. Anne becomes Jean Baptiste and in the course of time, she gets married to a woman, who seems to understand that her husband is not made like other men and appears to be fine with it.

A scene from Girl for a Day.

But the idyllic marriage is disrupted when the truth about the gender identity becomes public and reaches the court, which finds fault with her for violating the sanctity of marriage. The film is a fictional reconstruction based on the appeal filed by Anne/Jean’s lawyer. It is fascinating to watch how conversations on gender played out in the public sphere centuries ago. Even more moving is the plight of those like Anne forced to live in times when there existed hardly any awareness on gender-related matters.