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	"Fifth Annual New Films from Europe" At the Harvard Film Archive January 21 through 30.

Regarded at its rosiest, the history of Europe in the past century provides a lesson in the evolution and the eventual dissolution of borders. World War I eradicated the borders of empire, World War II shattered those of militant nationalism, the end of the Cold War melted those of ideology, and the prosecution of Yugoslavian war criminals in the Hague, it is to be hoped, will be the beginning of the end of atavistic ethnic hatred. In the coming century, with the success of the European Union, shouldn’t the remaining, more deeply entrenched borders of culture, religion, and class should give way as well?

To judge from the five features (Attila Janisch’s Másnap and Sönke Wortmann’s Das Wunder von Bern were unavailable for screening) and two collection of shorts I saw from the Harvard Film Archive’s "Fifth Annual New Films from Europe," the mood across the pond is one of guarded optimism. But the process is fraught with danger. Crossing old borders can uncover older frontiers, between men and women, power and impotence, conformity and rebellion.

The title and the opening scene of Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand/Head-On (2004; January 21 at 7 p.m.), winner of the Golden Bear at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, don’t offer much in the way of hopefulness. Dissolute, pissed-off Cahit (a broodingly charismatic Birol Ünel), Turkish-born but barely able to speak his native tongue, ends a drunken tirade by driving his car head-on into a wall. He comes to in a psych ward, where fellow suicidal patient Sibel (a deceptively elfin Sibel Kekilli), Turkish-born but craving the sexual and other freedoms offered by her adopted country, targets him as her husband. The only way she can be freed from the tyrannical traditions of her family is to marry a presumably disinterested Turkish man. And as it turns out, the only way Cahit can free himself from tragic memories and resume a life in society is by marrying Sibel.

So why doesn’t this marriage of inconvenience work out? Partly because such arrangements tend to trespass onto the irrational realms of love and jealousy. Partly because Akin seems caught on the border between the good-natured black comedy of Doris Dörrie and the gloom of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose masterpiece Angst essen Seele auf this film inevitably recalls. On its own, however, Gegen die Wand is an exhilarating experience; the performances crackle, and Akin’s dynamic editing, imagery, and hip soundtrack counterpoint the downbeat themes.

Differences in culture and religion also vex the lovers in Ken Loach’s Ae Fond Kiss . . . (2004; January 28 at 7 p.m.). A young Muslim girl declares her independence from the labels of her faith and ethnic origin in front of a student meeting at the Glasgow Catholic school she attends. A couple of her fellow students take her to task, and her brother Casim (Atta Yaqub) arrives just in time to rescue her from them (or vice versa). In the process, he lays eyes on the comely music teacher, Irish Catholic Róisín (Eva Birthistle), and so begins a romance seeking safe passage between the intransigencies and the intolerances of two faiths. Loach has a tendency to be preachy and pedantic, but here the focus is on tolerance and humanity, with the lovers’ passion and faith in each other proving a match for the folly of tradition.

The conflict between individual rights and traditional taboos don’t always end as amicably in real life as they do in the movies. Take for instance the recent death of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was butchered by a Muslim extremist because of his short TV film "Submission," a vitriolic critique of Islam’s treatment of women. He’s represented here with his feature film Interview (2003; January 22 and 24 at 9 p.m. and January 26 at 7 p.m.). It too is about the disparities between men and women — and between honesty and treachery and genuine journalism and tabloid trash, as well as many other gray areas. These frontiers would seem less dangerous than the one that ultimately claimed Van Gogh, but they are treacherous nonetheless.

Pierre (Pierre Bokma), the "political pundit" of a major daily, seethes when he’s assigned to interview Katja (Katja Schuurman), a movie star with "the finest tits in the world," on the night that the Dutch government is about to resign. "I’m interviewing a plastic cunt instead of the PM," he laments as he waits an hour for her to show up for their appointment at her loft. The interview gets off to a bad start and has an even worse finish, and along the way it curdles into a diabolical psychodrama that assaults your expectations despite its occasional staginess, contrivance, and excess. Reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Tape but more vitriolic, the film provokes outrage and clarity. It’s also eerily prophetic — Katja at one point tells Pierre in graphic detail how she’d like to murder him.

Few such histrionics take place in Raymond Dépardon’s documentary Le 10e chambre: Instants d’audiences/The Tenth District Court: Moments of Trial (2004; January 29 and 30 at 7 p.m.). But it offers a similar message. Interview shows how the institution of journalism succumbs to lies in order to tell the truth, thus invalidating itself. Le 10e chambre shows how the institution of the court succumbs to doubtful methods to fulfill its purpose, thus betraying justice.

The cases heard in these typical court sessions start out with drunk-driving charges against middle-class plaintiffs and end up with drug, robbery, and other criminal offenses committed by poor people, minorities, and illegal aliens. No surprise as to who gets the better deal, but Dépardon, taking the approach of Frederick Wiseman (whose recent Domestic Violence films this resembles), offers no direct comment. Instead, he chooses moments — such as a judge snidely speculating that the young Arab before her probably hasn’t been spending his spare time at the Centre Georges Pompidou — that deconstruct the fairness and the objectivity of the system.

A pseudo-documentary approach adds intensity and ambiguity to Swiss director Ursula Meier’s Des épaules solides/Strong Shoulders (2003; January 28 and 30 at 9 p.m.). It opens with 15-year-old Sabine (Louise Szpindel) discussing with her mother how too much athletic training can stop a woman from menstruating. Their talk has the effect of getting her mother interested — however briefly and negatively — in Sabine’s dream of becoming a star runner.

But Sabine’s obsession goes way beyond a need for parental attention. It blurs the borders between male and female, between personal relationships and calculated self-interest, between self-fulfillment and self-destruction. The most authentic and sensuous film about a female athlete since Robert Towne’s Personal Best (1982), Des épaules solides closes with a scene of profound and ambivalent poetry.

Poetry is the forte of the short film, as is evident in ShortMetraje (2004; January 21 at 9 p.m. and January 22 at 7 p.m.), a collection from Spain that’s a last-minute replacement (no explanation was offered) for Pete Travis’s Omagh. Few films evoke the traumas of growing up female as cogently as does Isabel de Ayguavives’s "La valiente/The Brave Little Girl," a six-minute video of barely glimpsed moments of childhood humiliation, terror, and temptation. Few films capture the longing and perseverance of the human spirit as does María Trénor’s 11-minute animation "¿Con qué la lavaré?/With What Shall I Wash It?", a rhapsody on oppressed Franco-era gays elevated by sacred and profane imagery and a soundtrack of a countertenor singing Luys de Narváez’s Renaissance hymn of the title.

The selections in Visions of Europe (2004; January 23 and 25 at 7 p.m.), 25 films by 25 directors on the theme of the European Union, tend to be more programmatic. But here, too, it’s the poetry that wins out. Many of the films are variations on the themes of unification (the best being the Czech director Sasha Gedeon’s sly "Unosono"), bureaucracy (Estonian director Arvo Iho’s crude but clever "Euroflot"), disenfranchisement (Hungarian director Béla Tarr’s simple and eloquent "Prologue"), and alienation (Austrian director Barbara Albert’s elliptical "Mars").

There are also several earnest shorts on the evils of trafficking illegal aliens, but in my opinion the kind of film that offers the most hope for the future of Europe is Latvian director Sharunas Bartas’s "Children Lose Nothing." Its silent, sepia-colored images of a brook, a paper boat, a child catching frogs, a boy and a girl kissing, and a rival suitor starting a fight don’t explore any particular political frontier, only the region of love, loss, and tragic beauty common to all.