The Vatican and the Catholic Church have had a strong relationship with the film industry in Iran, especially since 1999 when an Iranian delegation was invited to Rome. The Iranian Fajr film festival in Tehran welcomes Catholic representatives, and a Catholic-Muslim jury set up at that festival in 2002 continues to the present. Australian Catholics reviewer Fr Peter Malone MSC was the Vatican delegate responsible.
In fact, films from Iran have won many Catholic and ecumenical awards for films dramatising human values. This can be seen in several of the film screening at this year’s Australian Festival. The films emerge from a strict political regime but are able to transcend it.
THE NIGHT GUARDIAN, Iran, 2023. Starring Touraj Alvand, Laleh Marzban, Mohsen Kiaei and Vishka Asayesh. Directed by Reza Mirkarimi. 118 minutes.
A moving film about a good man. Director Mirkarimi has been making quality films for more than 20 years, focusing on ordinary, often struggling people, but who have an innate goodness motivating them in all that they do. He has won many awards, including Catholic awards.
We are introduced to Rasool, a 25-year-old from the country, in the city looking for a job, something of a simple soul. Suddenly, a man in a car picks him up, taking him to a seemingly abandoned building, offering him the job of nightwatchman. The task seems simple. He has some basic accommodation. And he is delighted, even borrowing the boss’ phone to ring his family with the good news.
Rasool doesn’t know or even dream, but we do, that he is being exploited. The situation is a scam, partly built apartments, payments laid down and shady dealings with the finances. We realise that Rasool does have some shrewd moments but is prepared to believe that everyone is motivated by good will. In fact, while the boss does set up Rasool to take blame for the scam, even prison, he is not entirely heartless and does want to do Rasool some good and provide for him.
But, more importantly, there is an old man at the site who has been working there for a long time. He has a lot of advice for Rasool, encourages him to look at the young lady who delivers food to the site. And, as always, Rasool follows advice, attracted to the young lady, visiting the home, discovering the old man is her father and is keen to find a husband for his daughter. And this is complicated because the old man, also a good man, is moving into dementia.
In fact, this aspect of the film offers us a nice, in the best sense, love story, but remains complicated by Rasool’s sometimes reticence, courtesy, deference, and the discovery that his potential wife has a severe hearing problem. There are some lovely scenes where Rasool’s family come from the countryside, are entertained in the city, two families meeting, talking, eating together, with great hopes.
As indicated, simple and good souls live in a complex world, and can easily become victims. But, it is a pleasure to watch Rasool, the good man, his ups and downs, his surviving, some moments of resentment, but always wanting to think the best of people. The film may not win the Oscar but is well worth viewing.
WINNERS, UK, 2022. Starring Reza Naji, Parsa Maghami, Hossein Abedini and Helia Mohammad Khani. Directed by Hassan Nazer. 85 minutes.
The cinema industry in Iran has, for decades, been outstanding, a succession of world-renowned directors, writers, producers, performers, presence at many festivals, many awards. This is the background to this entertaining film, made by Uranian-Scottish writer-director Nazar. He is from Aberdeen but has written this story about life on the run and brings to life a country village.
This film could be called Oscar, or the Adventures of Oscar – that is, the Academy Award winning statuette. The director of the best Foreign Language Film is banned from travelling to the US for the Oscars so it is brought back to the country but is inadvertently lost. One day nine-year-old Yahya and his friend Leyla find a precious statuette in the desert. As the authorities search for the lost treasure, sharing Yahya’s passion for cinema, Yahya’s boss Nasser Khan (Naji) decides to help the children find its rightful owner.
Many Iranian films focus on stories of children, as does this one. The young Maghami has excellent presence.
The film has a light touch but deals with several serious themes centred around actors becoming victims of celebrity and wanting to retire, as well as poverty in the Iranian countryside, children working and school bullying.
The thought occurs that if a British version of the screenplay had been available in the 1950s, it would have been the making of a wonderful Ealing Studios comedy.
THE LOCUST, Iran, 2022. Starring Hanieh Tavassoli, Pegah Ahangarani, Pedram Sharifi, Ramin Sadighi. Directed by Faezeh Azizkhani. 78 minutes.
This is a small film made by a writer-director who has made only one film previously, seven years earlier. This is a film about the difficulties in getting a film made.
The film opens with a five-minute sequence in a car – a screenwriter driving to pick up her producer, talking to camera, watching a policeman riding a bike, continually passing him. She then picks up the producer, and difficulties begin.
The couple arrive home where various members of the production having gathered. The rest of the film illustrates the difficulties, contradictions and power struggles of making a movie. There are people shouting at each other, members of the family criticising the writer for her perspectives on the family, the arrival of the writer’s mother, tension between the two and facing the issue of selling the house to raise money. Finally, when there might have been some kind of movement towards agreement and the possibilities of shooting the film, their financial producer is arrested for money deals and embezzlement.
There is no real solution to the dilemma. The film can’t be made. The writer, with something of a prickly personality, easily alienating others, clashing with her mother, has a loud scream of frustration.
There are voices, her ghostly father, and symbolic rooster strutting around the house. However, as the family and the others begin to disperse, she has some kind of reconciliation with her mother. She is then seen driving again, passing men on bicycles, one carrying a bargain basket of roosters. It would seem that the only way the writer-director can get a film made is making a film about her struggles.
DARK MATTER, Iran, 2023. Starring Mahdis Mahdiyar, Keivan Parmar and Raha Soleimani. Directed by Karim Lakzaheh. 84 minutes
Dark Matter is a brief film for the Festival, arthouse circuit and aspiring filmmakers. It is small budget movie, focused on a few central characters, and a film within a film, so to speak. It became celebrated in 2023 for its critique of the hijab, considering the controversies in Iran, the condemnation of women not wearing the hijab, the interventions of the moral police, the deaths of young women at the hands of the Morality police. Dark Matter was, excusing the pun, unveiled at the 2023 Karlovy Vary Festival.
Two acting would-bes are in the countryside, discussing auditions for small parts in the film being made, hanging around, conversations. One is an actress, defiantly not wearing the hijab, going back to her hotel, waiting for a call, invited to a party, but thinking that the other hopeful actress was going to get the part. The actor, meanwhile, hangs around, ingratiates himself in helping with moving equipment, offering himself as a driver. In collusion with the young actress, he drives her rival out into the countryside pretending that this is where the shoot is to take place and leaves her there alone. He then drives his friend – but, a change of heart, going to rescue the other actress who is very angry.
They encounter a would-be director who has an old camera. What happens is that they concoct their own screenplay, taking advantage of their own personalities, their interactions, especially with a millionaire. They make up the film as they go, filming particular scenes, meaning that the action does take the form of a small drama, the friends robbing the millionaire, his safe, finding a piece of a meteorite, making contacts to sell it, and their being one-upped by the buyer turning out to be the millionaire himself – who has a gun and shoots them.
While the general audience may be interested and amused, the situation, the characters, the desire to make a film, making up a scenario, acting it, filming it, is much more for movie students and hopefuls.
IRANIAN FILM FESTIVAL DATES
Sydney: 16 – 22 November
Canberra: 17 – 19 November
Melbourne: 23 – 29 November
Brisbane: 30 November – 6 December
Adelaide: 1 – 3 December
Perth: 7 – 13 December