Women working in a stacked system: Two offerings from the Thessaloniki film fest
The struggle of working women is a concept familiar to modern audiences in cinema. The challenges they face are often gender specific, such as female objectification or degradation. The 64th Thessaloniki International Film Festival offered input into the intersectionality discourse by choosing two films that depicted working-class struggles and their coping mechanisms.
“Animal” (2023) and “Don’t Expect Too Much from the End of the World” (2023) were two films that prioritized conveying the systemic challenges working-class women face over the conventional narrative.
“Animal” is a Greek film by Sofia Exarchou about the female experience in the tourist industry. Kalia (Dimitra Vlagopoulou), after spending almost 20 years in the industry, dancing for the entertainment of tourists, slowly realizes that her work has become her identity. Ephemeral pleasures, like alcohol and casual sex, blur monotony and unhappiness. The remarkable performance of Vlagopoulou as Kalia takes the viewer through the painful journey of realization while highlighting that the system remains entirely unaffected and unchanged. Kalia is seamlessly replaced.
“Don’t Expect Too Much from the End of the World,” a film by Romanian Radu Jude follows Angela, a production assistant through a day’s work. Angela (Ilinca Manolache) is a strong-minded, relentless and intelligent young woman who drives across Bucharest running errands to shoot a workplace safety video commissioned by a multinational company. Unreasonable bosses, low pay, and long hours often strain workers in the lower social classes. Dealing with vulgar men making degrading comments is an added ill in the female experience. Angela, however, galvanizes the viewer with her sarcastic TikTok videos going on vulgar and heedless rants as Bobita, an Andrew Tate type persona using a unibrow filter that barely obscures her blonde ponytail. Radu Jude makes stark and sharp references and criticisms of modern reality leaving the viewer angered, inspired and certainly amused.
The two films managed to demonstrate that we live in a world of inequality and injustice. Yet, the aftertaste of each screening pointed in opposite directions.
A friend once categorized films within a dipole of those whose undertone is defined by misanthropy and those defined by philanthropy. Exarchou’s film was on the verge of misanthropy leaving little to no space for hope in the individual or the collective. Jude, on the other hand, conveyed painful realities through characters that left viewers stimulated.
