A leading figure among the younger generation of Iranian filmmakers to gain international acclaim, Ali Asgari marks a decisive geographic and thematic shift away from the historic masters: moving beyond Kiarostami’s rural, dust-swept Iran to a contemporary, metropolitan, and vibrant Tehran framed by sleek design interiors and sharp urban vistas. Within this modern landscape, the director embeds a dissident gaze, dismantling the mechanisms of authoritarian control with a masterclass balance of moral tension and razor-sharp irony.
An Iranian doctor, desperate after an arrest that costs him his practice, decides to take his own life. Before doing so, he spends one final day with his siblings and mother, trying to prepare them for his absence in a farewell made of everyday gestures and unspoken words, aga...
Included in the Orizzonti competition, with a jury presided over by Gianni Amelio, the director’s narrative feature debut adopts a near-documentary tone to explore social and moral surveillance, the female body, and vulnerability.
Based on the short film The Baby, presented by Asgari in Venice in 2014, for which the filmmaker reworked the ending in this feature-length adaptation.
Co-directed and co-written with Alireza Khatami, whom Asgari met in Venice in 2017. Nine everyday vignettes set in Tehran unravel the absurdities of a regime that surveils, penalizes, and micro-regulates every facet of civic life.
Less a conventional documentary than an autobiographical essay film, made after Iranian authorities barred the director from leaving the country following the Cannes premiere of Terrestrial Verses. Asgari seeks refuge in an internal stream of consciousness – a realm state censorship cannot reach.
A work where realism harnesses the cinematic form to heighten the absurdity of the reality it depicts. Bahram is a filmmaker silenced by the Iranian Ministry of Culture: astride a Vespa, he sets out on an underground mission to host clandestine screenings of his banned film.
