This German short film has more Portuguese than German lines spoken, and takes place in the early 1990s within the diaspora of political refugees from a fictional Latin American country (called El Dorado in the film).
Many years ago, Mara fled from persecution in her native country and came to West Berlin. Her adult daughter Luzia speaks German, and Mara has told her very little about El Dorado – a reluctance that seems to out a strain their relationship.
Now the wind of change is in the air. Not only has the Berlin Wall come down, but the military dictatorship in El Dorado is on the back foot. Emigrés like Mara are encouraged to come home, have been offered “amnesty”, and are invited tell their story in front of a Truth Commission that is meant to deal with past atrocities. But Mara rips up the letters. She does not want to go home, and she does not want to drag up her own repressed memories.
Mara’s memories are not completely gone, however. We can clearly see that Mara is suffering from PTSD and experiences nightmares and flashbacks.
And Mara is not the only emigré in Berlin. There are at least two others, one of whom, Beto, was once a close friend of Mara and her husband. He had been in exile in East Berlin, and now that the Wall has fallen, they run into each other and begin to talk. And Beto is much more keen than Mara to talk about the past, to go home, and to tell his story. His argument is that it is their duty to tell their story so that it will not be forgotten and so that their native country can heal and can build a better society. Mara, on the other hand, says that she has a right to forget.
Ein Jahr, Zwei Winter was directed by a young Brasilian director by the name of Pedro Martin, who also wrote the screenplay together with Johanna Enzmann. The roles of Mara and Beto are played by two Brasilian actors who have a long established career in Germany: Isabella Parkinson and Kleber Valim.
A third emigré is played by Chilean actor Adolfo Assor, who also has very long career in Germany behind him. His role is smaller, and he only speaks German here (which makes sense, as he might not actually speak Portuguese). And since Luzia also speaks only German in this film, there was also no need to cast a Portuguese-speaker in that role. The role went to a young German actress (seemingly from a Turkish background): Aleyna Cara. Not only is Cara a very talented and busy actress, but she also looks 100% like Mara’s daughter, which is not an unimportant detail.
I am not sure what the film’s title (“one year, two winters”) is supposed to mean; it is probably deliberately vague and open to interpretation. If the fictional country of El Dorado is situated sufficiently south of the equator, then Mara might have left there at the end of winter only to arrive in Germany at the beginning of the winter in the northern hemisphere, thus having to go through two winters in a row – an experience which would carry some symbolism regarding the things she went through and the experience of being on the run.
With regards to the repression of memories, Isabella Parkinson plays Mara with a nice, stony face which betrays little emotion with the exception of those moments when the mask slips – usually accompanied by flashbacks or panic attacks. The flashbacks are represented very well in the film through visual and acoustic means. There are at least some visual effects involved, but I am not sure anyone besides the DP (Anton Yaremchuk) or the editor (Dennis Gnoni Visconti) worked on this. The sound design was done by Jerome Huber and Guillermo Fiallo Montero.
The film is very well made and has a great cast. But in terms of story, it feels too “literal”, if that makes sense. While there are one or two things about Mara’s past that we might interpret in one way or the other, for the most part everything is “on screen”. By comparison, one has to “work harder” to explore all the facets of Lobos or Gloria Eterna, which is always a nice thing, especially in short films. So, while there is absolutely nothing wrong with Ein Jahr, Zwei Winter, I will rate it slightly lower, at 6.5 out of 10.
Latin American Film Reviews 