Jenayat-e bi deghat

Als Protest gegen das Schah-Regime und die Kultur des Westensverübten am 19. August 1978 vier Männer einen Brandanschlag aufdas Cinema Rex in Abadan – 422 Menschen starben. Mokri nimmt das Attentat als Ausgangspunkt und folgt in mehrere Richtungen gleichzeitig dem Wechselspiel von Geschichte und Fiktion. In sich überlappenden Zeitschlaufen zeigt er das alltägliche Geschehen rund um ein heutiges Kinomuseum, auf das neuerlich ein Anschlag geplant wird. Dann wieder schwenkt er zum Film im Film, der im Stil eines iranischen Klassikers in den Bergen spielt, wo schließlich ein kleiner Haufen Versprengter jenes Werk schauen, das damals im abgebrannten Kino lief. (Barbara Schweizerhof)

In 1978, four men set fire to a movie theater in Abadan, ending the lives of more than 400 people and becoming one of the events that would later trigger the Iranian Revolution. CARELESS CRIME tells the story of a group of four men who are recklessly trying to recreate this event in modern-day Iran. While they plan, we also see some of the people linked to what happened (the theater workers, the audience) and a few scenes from the film shown in the theater during this potential catastrophe.
Structured as a series of sequence shots and time-loops, Shahram Mokri’s film is an exploration of cinema’s ability to deal with time and even transform the experience of time itself into various different forms. It deals with time as history, thinking about the weight that facts from the past carry in the present. It also works with the effects of repetitions, routines, habits, and negations and how these gently impede life continuing into the future. But mostly, it examines different forms of narration, moving forward and moving backward to reshape our experience of a story, and of fiction as a thinking device, creating its own narrative as if it were a living, breathing creature. (Lucía Salas)

Shahram Mokri: THE DRAGONFLY STORM (2002, K), LIMITS OF THE CIRCLE (2005, K), ANDO-C (2007, K), ASHKAN, THE CHARMED RING AND OTHER STORIES (2008), RAW, COOKED, BURNED (2011, K), FISH & CAT (2013), INVASION (2017)