Dast-neveshtehaa nemisoozand (OmdU)

The story unfolds in the here and now of a cold, unsmiling Tehran where despair and anxiety reign. The film opens like a thriller, with a man running from a pursuer and jumping into a car driven by his colleague. It’s only after we follow him home and feel sympathy for his sick child and financial problems that we discover that he and his friend are the torture and assassination arms of the state. They are searching for copies of a banned manuscript that describes an incident in which 21 poets on a bus bound for a conference were slated for elimination. Luckily, fate forestalled the fatalities, but the writers were warned never to speak of the incident. Mohammad Rasoulof was arrested in the summer of 2009, and later convicted of filming without permission. For the past several years, he has been living between Tehran and Hamburg. Because of iranian censorship, and in order to maintain the safety of his crew and cast, their names were redacted from the credits. (Alissa Simon)

The film will also be screened in the OmeU version.