The Executive Director of Berlin Film Festival welcomed the crew of “Dreams’ Gate”
Mansour Jahani – The special screening and red carpet ceremony for the documentary feature film “Dreams’ Gate” directed by Negin Ahmadi and produced by Elaheh Nobakht was held at the 73rd edition of Berlinale, with the festival president Mariette Rissenbeek welcoming the film’s crew to the prestigious event.
The special screening and red carpet event of “Dreams’ Gate” was held at Urania Cinema as part of the Generations competition category of the 73rd round of Berlinale, attended by the director Negin Ahmadi, the producer Elaheh Nobakht, the film editor Loghman Sokhanvar, the composer Hossein Mirzagholi, the color enhancement and laboratory executive Saman Majd Vafaei, Taim Hussein the Syrian executive producer, and Mansour Jahani as media consultant; Mariette Rissenbeek personally welcomed the cast and crew of this film.
The first showing of “Dreams’ Gate” took place at 10 am on Tuesday, 21 February 2023 at Cubix 2, exclusively for media and cinema professionals, and on Friday 24 February 2023, the film was screened at 10 am at Zoo Palast 2. On Saturday 25 Februrary 2023, Dreams’ Gate will be shown at Cubix 8 at 6:45 pm, and on the next day at 10 am at Titania Cineplex.
In its principal screening at the great hall of Urania Cineplex filled with people, Dreams’ Gate was incessantly applauded and praised by the Berlinale audience, and this event was followed by a Q&A session.
Early in the session, the director Negin Ahmadi pointed to the beautiful dress she was wearing and said, “This dress is from the city of Paveh in Uramanat District which is one of the most exquisite and authentic parts of Kurdistan.”
“When I entered Rojavayê Kurdistanê, I noticed how fiercer the women were than the men in combat; even though the apparent nature of a woman is blessing, kindness, and affection, and I had always likened women to the rain; since when it rains, everything becomes lively and beautiful. But war does not represent such likeness and I thought that it would not provide me with a female perspective in that regard. In Rojavayê Kurdistanê, I was both witnessing the war and the child within a woman. I got to know firsthand what powerful and brave commanders these girls were, in spite of their femininity,” she added.
In another segment of this session, Elaheh Nobakht, the producer of Dreams’ Gate commented on the impact of cinema, “What we filmmakers do is to envision the pain and hardships that people go through. In this film, we tried to portray the pain imposed on Kurdish Kobani female fighters, and watch their admirable resistance, all from the view point of a young Iranian girl seeking a feminine identity. In fact, our camera speaks more fluently than any manifesto or medium, via the portrayal and the filmmaking shaped in the present sensitive circumstances.”
Talking about the production of this movie, Nobakht said, “Making this film took five years as we were not after sponsorships from any ideological spheres, and merely sought a humane perspective to reflect the heroic resistance of these girls against the terrorist group ISIS. Therefore, we had to pay particular attention when editing the film so that it may not implicate or endorse a certain ideology, rendering the entire process pretty difficult. It took almost two and a half years to finish editing, but the final product proved to be a neutral representation of the lives and dreams long forgotten in the midst of war, neglected by the world, and we tried to portray that.”
The producer of this film commented on how she first met the director Negin Ahmadi, “Four years ago, Negin Ahmadi brought me a teaser and I saw how she had lived in Rojavayê Kurdistanê. I could not close my eyes to this, as I felt that as a young girl, I too had a part to play in this corner of the world to echo the voices of Kobani female fighters for the whole world, and I may be of assistance in this path.”
Visit Films will represent worldwide rights for the documentary ‘Dream’s Gate’, which will be world premiering at the Berlinale in the Generations section.
Presided by Mariette Rissenbeek with artistic management by Carlo Chatrian, the 73rd Berlinale will be held from 16-26 February, 2023, consisting of competition sections such as Main Competition, Generations competition, Forum, Shorts, Documentary, and the non-competition category including Panorama, Special Screening, and Classic Cinema Screening.
Photo By: Jan Kraus