hesam-shahriari

Fish and Cat was recently screened in Iran as part of what is called the "Art and Experience" movement, wherein independent films receive limited screening and all box- office revenue is given to the director and producers in support of such films.

I had personally followed news on Fish and Cat ever since its recognition at the Venice film festival. The movie is advertised as a slasher, and I guess that's what gets audiences all excited about the film in the first place: a number of guys running a restaurant in the north of Iran allegedly serve human meat to their customers (not the most usual theme for an Iranian film) but the movie is far more complex and layered than this simple hook would suggest.

Apart from the seemingly-impossible feat of recording a 2-hour-long movie in one take (I can only imagine how the crew felt after someone made a mistake -- and I assume there must have been at least a few), the cyclical nature of time, the recurrence of events, the eerie voice overs, the sudden shifts in tone and the elements of horror planted here and there made Fish and Cat into a cinematic treat.

Director Shahram Mokri obviously does not expect his audience to make sense of it all. Rather, he wants you to get lost in the borderlands of dream and reality, and he achieves this quite brilliantly. In fact, during the first few loops in time, I found myself trying to figure out what had just happened and at which point in the overall storyline the iterations were taking place; but after the loops occurred increasingly more often half-way through the film, I simply gave up and just waited to see where the film would take me next.

The movie can be viewed as a series of short films wrung together through the story of the restaurant and its ominous cooks, and in spite of the dissimilar themes (coincidence, loss, love, etc.), the overall product is a surprisingly coherent narrative and a successful feature-length film.

I've just returned from watching Mr. Maadi's directorial debut. The movie's plot revolves around a woman who discovers her husband has been cheating on her. As she delves into this affair, she starts to become more and more detached from her spouse and starts to re-examine the life she has been leading all these years.

The movie is decently executed and well-made. The performances are believable, especially that of Saber Abar. But what struck me most was the ripple effect that Asghar Farhady's "A Separation" has had on Iranian cinema. This newly-emerging realist social drama is spreading like wild fire, and I believe that it will continue to do so in the future. I know this because of the audience's reaction to the film at the closing credits (In Iran, it is customary for audiences to applaud at the end of a film which they believe to have been good).

I recommend this film to most Iranians, as well as those non-Iranians who wish to know more about Iran (Beyond what they see on Fox News).