When navigating the as-yet-unknown films of a festival program, nationality still provides a persuasive point of reference for some, a feeling underlined by the proud declarations issued by national funding organizations, promotional bodies, or particularly partisan members of the press once titles have been announced. This year’s reduced Berlinale Forum lineup also invites tenuous lines of this kind to be drawn (two films from Argentina, two films from Canada!), although the three Franco-German co-productions shot elsewhere say far more about how films are made in 2021. If such a line thus links Sabrina Zhou’s The Good Woman of Sichuan to Rhayne Vermette’s Ste. Anne, this is not a reason to talk about them together per se. The fact that a 16mm family drama from the Treaty 1 territory and a pristine, digitally shot contemporary reading of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan set in that same Chinese province are equally “Canadian” is more a reflection of the diverse reality of the country, and, by extension, its filmmaking.
For all the obvious differences between these two works, however, mapping their similarities provides an apt framework for finding a way into the distinct yet equally, intentionally impalpable worlds they meticulously craft. Both of these ambitious first features by women allude to established narratives in order to push at their outer reaches, stripping these structures of most of their usual incident and occurrence and filling the resultant spaces with vying,
