Both written and directed by Babak Anvari, 2+2=5 (2011) is a short film which highlights important social notions like human rights, natural freedoms, societal order and violent promotion of certain behavioral norms. In 2012, it was nominated under Best Short Film category for the Bafta Film Awards but never won, unfortunately. Anvari’s narration implicitly gives a hint to certain negative historical events of the humanity which should be avoided from repeating in the future. Namely, it reminds one of such political regimes as Communism and Nazism, the drawbacks of which include limiting humans’ freedoms and their natural rights. The film aims to remind its spectators that certain societal order sometimes can require a person to forget about
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They can be created in a natural and in an artificial way. The natural way is created by history itself and corresponding historical trends; the artificial one is reinforced commercialized industries such as film industry when film-makers are interested to manipulate certain memories to create trends for their consumers and earn more. Especially strong collective memory is formed from periods of authoritarian governments. It is also strong enough even when film makers address such historical periods to provide contemporary public with more detail about them and to warn about the danger of dictatorship. Hallbwachs (1990) writes that historical films are often a subject of certain perceptions of the past that reflect some of the trends in which collective memories are portrayed. He also characterized societies and cultural history as something dynamic and changing. Yet, with all its dynamics, a society is never insured against repeated mistakes of choosing undemocratic social order. It seems that Anvari’s film aims to warn exactly about that. According to Hallbwachs, 2+2=5 film addresses the collective memory of the humanity to remind it about Nazi Germany and communist USSR, about Korea and many other states who lived under authoritarian leaders and experienced dictatorship and undemocratic social
They can be created in a natural and in an artificial way. The natural way is created by history itself and corresponding historical trends; the artificial one is reinforced commercialized industries such as film industry when film-makers are interested to manipulate certain memories to create trends for their consumers and earn more. Especially strong collective memory is formed from periods of authoritarian governments. It is also strong enough even when film makers address such historical periods to provide contemporary public with more detail about them and to warn about the danger of dictatorship. Hallbwachs (1990) writes that historical films are often a subject of certain perceptions of the past that reflect some of the trends in which collective memories are portrayed. He also characterized societies and cultural history as something dynamic and changing. Yet, with all its dynamics, a society is never insured against repeated mistakes of choosing undemocratic social order. It seems that Anvari’s film aims to warn exactly about that. According to Hallbwachs, 2+2=5 film addresses the collective memory of the humanity to remind it about Nazi Germany and communist USSR, about Korea and many other states who lived under authoritarian leaders and experienced dictatorship and undemocratic social