While Iranian anti-regime film is starting to search for new themes, such as those concerning the sexes and music, some of the filmmakers from this program still recycle children’s topics that have become an Iranian trademark



The situation in which the good-natured protagonist of Vazirian’s film Khoda nazdik ast (God is Close) found himself is in some ways similar to the situation of contemporary Iranian film. Just as Vazirian’s hero had to tie a wooden fruit box to his back while driving a teacher to the local school on his motorcycle, so that their bodies would not, God forbid, touch, this imaginary box separates the two different production bodies of Iranian cinema. On one side we have the bold anti-regime film makers and festival favorites such as Jafar Panahi (who was recently sentenced to six years in prison along with a twenty year ban on making films and giving interviews because he publicly supported Musawi’s “green” opposition), and already established authors such as Kiarostami who can make films in Tuscany (Copie conforme), as well as hermetic experimental films in Teheran theatres, working with many Iranian film and actresses (Shirin), including a French one (Juliette Binoche). On the other side, we have a whole mass of anonymous authors who agree to certain compromises or try to avoid censorship by softening their social critique with allegorical and satirical tones.

Among the directors from this year’s program of Iranian films, only the genius Majid Majidi does not hesitate to openly show Iranian reality. In his 40-minute long neorealist miniature Khoda mi ayad (God Will Come) he quite boldly points the finger at the regime that does not help the poorest to cover their hospital bills and who end up having to count on God as their ultimate savior or the solidarity and humanity of other people, such as their incarnation in the character of a postal worker. Mohammad Ahmadi fights similar taboos in the film mosaic Lost truth that follows Panahi’s female geometry (Circle) touching upon the problematic topics of abortion and unwanted pregnancy. This is why all the films in this program are encompassed in the theocratic motto “In the Name of God”. While in Majidi’s film calling upon God is more a reflection of rural narrow-mindedness and despair, in other directors’ films the savior is there to show them the way or merely intervenes in form of some miracle. In God is Close (Khoda nazdik ast) God appears in the hero’s when crazy love turns him into a hermit. In Vazirian’s allegory about class differences and the nouveu riche (A Span of Heaven), God is replaced by the bearded angel who appears to a poor boy and presents him with a piece of heaven as a gift. In Loneliness Every Night (Har shab tanhai) by Rasul Sadr Ameli, there is a clash of two principles, a rational one that is symbolized by the character of the husband and spiritually incarnated in his gravely ill wife, who tries to find salvation during a pilgrimage to the holy city (out of all the films in this program, only in Ameli’s does a woman partially remove her scarf to show us part of her shaved head). Ameli’s other film also takes place in the same holy city (The Night). However, whereas Vazirian divides bodies with a wooden box as a sort of a bizarre chastity belt, Ameli uses handcuffs to connect a rough cop to a doctor accused of forging his license.

While Iranian anti-regime film is starting to search for new themes, such as those concerning the sexes (the position of women and transsexuals in the theocratic regime) and music (Ghobadi’s recent fresco about the Iranian underground scene), some of the filmmakers from this program still recycle children’s topics that have become an Iranian trademark. There is the irresistible kid from Majidi’s film who symbolically saves a duck, Ramezani’s ecologically infused story about a boy who is looking for a golden-tailed pheasant and the playful boy stuck in the cart from which his father sells pomegranates (the cart is sort of a peacetime version of the tank in Maozov’s Lebanon). Their hearts, balloons and pomegranates are so big that they cannot fit into the screens of an energetic videogame. (Dragan Rubeša)