“Do you think it will be 
war?” young bride-to-be Gûle 
(Kajeen Aloush, debut) asks her 
older sister. A pause. 
“It already is war,” her sister 
replies. 
So begins “Berbû,” Sevinaz 
Evdike’s dazzling directorial 
debut, which had its American 
premiere this Thursday at the 
Ann Arbor Film Festival. 
“Berbù,” which clocks in 
at just 70 minutes, is a deeply 
personal portrait of the ongoing 
Syrian civil war. The film is set 
in Serekaniye, a Syrian border 
town constantly besieged by 
neighboring 
Turkish 
forces. 
The 
film 
opens 
in 
Gûle’s 
tidy 
family 
home, 
where 
preparations for her upcoming 
wedding are in full swing. The 
everyday bustle is brought to 
a halt when her fiance and his 
family arrive to pose a single 
question: Has the war become 
bad enough to postpone the 
wedding?
The 
war 
answers 
that 
question for them. Turkish 
shelling begins, driving Gûle 
and her family from their home. 
As they join a stream of fleeing 
residents, the focus shifts to 
another young evacuee, Barin 
(Barin Resho, debut). She has 
just gotten married and is swept 
into the desert still wearing her 
billowing white wedding gown. 
She watches numbly as her 
family continues to squabble 
while they’re carted off to a 
refugee center. At the film’s 
midpoint, a final protagonist 
is introduced. Nazê (Nebeer 
Khanem, debut) is another 
resident of the refugee camp 

and is young and frequently 
petulant. 
She 
resents 
her 
situation 
and 
overbearing 
mother and harbors a crush 
on a fellow refugee, a quiet 
young man whom her mother 
desperately wants her to marry.
These three young women 
share 
the 
film’s 
attention, 
forced to contend with both 
the immediate horror of war 
and the more subtle discomfort 
of womanhood. The film takes 
its time, letting viewers rest 
with each character as they 
struggle to reconcile their new 
identities as wives. Gûle hides, 
listening to the men of her 
family discuss her fate through 
open windows and from behind 
walls. Barin runs, wandering 
alone into the open Syrian 
desert as her husband’s family 
fights over the technicalities of 
the new marriage. Nazê resists, 
refusing to help her mother 
with 
even 
the 
most 
basic 
tasks. If she doesn’t accept 
her situation, she hopes that it 
won’t become real. 
Evdike 
is 
an 
exacting 
director. 
She 
uses 
small 
moments to emphasize innate 
human responses to distress. 
The weight of marriage isn’t 
expressed in outbursts or vows, 
but in the knit of Nazê’s brow 
as she tries to do her hair in a 
shattered mirror and the flash 
of sorrow in Gûle’s eyes when 
her fiance refuses to look at 
her. 
Evdike 
maintains 
this 
exacting ethos in her treatment 
of the larger war. Children 
do handstands against half-
destroyed walls while soldiers 
march by. A boy casually throws 
up a peace sign to passing cars 
as he evacuates his besieged 
neighborhood. There are no 
guns or tanks — just humanity 

continuing to fight for the right 
to exist in the midst of intense 
destruction. 
This 
personalized 
examination of violence is far 
more compelling than a typical 
war film. “Berbû” focuses not 
on soldiers but civilians — 
the people whose agency and 
livelihoods 
the 
surrounding 
violence strips away. Evdike 
draws parallels between the 
collective 
dehumanization 
of war and the individual 
degradations 
that 
marriage 
often entails. Gûle, Nazê and 

Barin are caught up in a wave 
of refugees united in their 
lack of agency. Even within 
a 
demographic 
hyper-aware 
of how terrible it is to be 
powerless, the young women 
are forced to renounce their 
autonomy 
in 
the 
name 
of 
marriage. 
“Berbû” 
draws 
a 
simple 
conclusion — war emphasizes 
the worst parts of society. But 
unlike traditional war films, 
“Berbû” doesn’t rely on gore 
or soldiers. Evdike frames the 
tragedy of war through several 

young women to show how 
communities continue to pedal 
traditional beliefs and desires 
even when torn apart and 
displaced. War does not cause 
change; it does not transform 
or rewrite. Instead, people 
cling all the more strongly to 
the things they are certain of — 
even if those things are cruel or 
antiquated. 
War does not free Gûle, Nazê 
or Barin. It does not send them 
on adventures or make them 
stronger. It only more tightly 
traps them in a life they will 

never fully own — a life that 
will play out in an even more 
ruined setting than that of 
their predecessors.
“Berbû” is a classic war film 
in that it condemns violence 
as futile and foolish. It is also 
a rare piece that combines 
that moral with feminism. It 
reminds viewers that war is not 
just composed of weapons and 
violence but also of real humans 
— and that those humans 
deserve a chance at something 
greater than the world in which 
that war has trapped them. 

This 
past 
Friday 
at 
the 
University of Michigan’s Fashion 
Media Summit, influencer Remi 
Bader took the stage. While her 
interview was entirely virtual, 
presented on the large projector 
in the Ross School of Business’ 
Robertson 
Auditorium, 
her 
message was still clear. Famous 
for her “body positive” platform, 
Bader has inspired her followers 
to reach new levels of confidence 
and self-love. The interview lasted 
half an hour and was led by MFMS 
co-Presidents Talia Potters and 
Hannah Shipley.
Beginning with a discussion 
of Bader’s background in public 
relations 
and 
marketing, 
and 
finishing with her hopes for body 
inclusivity in the fashion industry, 
Potters and Shipley took us through 
Bader’s story, in Bader’s words, 
with ease. During the height of the 
COVID-19 pandemic, Bader was let 
go from her job and, like everybody 
at the time, downloaded the TikTok 
app. This was the first time she saw 
“curvy” girls and plus-sized fashion 
in a media setting, Bader said. 
Inspired by this, and in a search 
for more confidence, Bader started 
producing content, what she called 
“silly” try-on clothing hauls. These 
videos she called “realistic hauls” 
— where she would order several 
outfits from well-known brands 
such as Zara, PrettyLittleThing 
or Fashion Nova and compare the 
size and fit to the website pictures. 
Now, she moves beyond realistic 

hauls and into topics such as mental 
health and her day-to-day life.
When asked how she would 
describe her transition into social 
media, she firmly said, “I never 
wanted to be the ‘spokesperson’ 
for body positivity. I just wanted 
to show my life and be a positive 
inspiration.” And that she did. 
Several years into her new career, 
Bader has amassed a following of 
over 2.2 million on TikTok, and 
540,000 on Instagram. In the 
interview, she mentions how lucky 
she feels to have this large of a 
platform, and that her “blow up” 
was as unexpected as it could’ve 
been. She believes that TikTok has 
become more saturated with body 
positivity content now, relative to 
the time of her “blow up.” To her, 
timing was everything. 
Aside from a social media career, 
Bader has also transitioned into 
clothing design and line curation. 
Her collaboration with Revolve, a 
popular online shopping website, 
was indeed the first time the 
company had up to size 4X in a 
line. It all began with one of her 
“realistic Revolve hauls” in which 
Bader beseeched the company 
to “do better.” Upon the video’s 
upload, Revolve instantly reached 
out to Bader, asking if she would 
be interested in designing her 
own line. When developing the 
line, she started with the design 
team, working on silhouettes and 
body shapes, with a variety of 
loose-fitting and tighter clothing 
depending on consumers’ level of 
comfort. 

Remi Bader at 
Michigan’s Fashion 
Media Summit: The 
epitome of positivity

LOLA D’ONOFRIO
Daily Arts Writer

Courtesy of Remi X Revolve

This image was taken from the official trailer for “Berbû,” distributed by Komîna Fîlm a Rojava

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

4 — Wednesday, April 5, 2023
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

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Ann Arbor Film Festival 2023: ‘Berbû’ explores 
the intersection of war and womanhood

SKYLAR WALLISON
Daily Arts Writer

