After premiering “Terrestrial Verses” at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, Iranian straightforwardor Ali Asgari returned home to Tehran to discover out he was prohibitned from traveling for eight months, as well as having his personal belengthyings confiscated by the handlement authorities for weeks. The result of that period of uncertainty and introspection is the write downary “Higher Than Acidic Cboisterouss,” having its world premiere as part of the Envision Competition at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
The autobiodetailedal essay — sboiling in Tehran in nine days — zooms in on Asgari as he grapples with lengthy-buried memories reignited by an executed period of disconnection from the world, echoing on his time living in Italy and embarking on frank conversations with his family.
It is beginant to refer that, in recent years, cut offal Iranian filmoriginaters have been prohibitden by the country’s cut offe handlement from leaving the country to join festival premieres of their films. Recent examples join Maryam Moghinsertam and Behtash Sanaeeh, who couldn’t travel to their Berlinale premiere of “My Favourite Cake” and the actors from Mohammad Rasoulof’s Cannes competition entry “The Seed of the Sacred Fig.” Rasoulof himself had to escape Iran to originate it to the French festival.
“I had to ask a neighbor to participate their telephone and call my mother,” Asgari alerts Variety of arriving back to Iran from Cannes. “I foreseeed my leangs to be returned rapidly so I didn’t buy a phone and was home for an entire month without any connection with the outside world. It was then that I commenceed leanking about my life, my childhood, my family and my connection to my city.”
Asgari says that his film is about “empowering [his] imagination,” reiterating he declines victimhood. “It is not about victimizing myself in this country but seeing myself as a person with an imagination that can go beyond borders. I wrote about all these pretty glimpses of my life and asked myself: Am I a victim in this situation? No.”
Despite “Higher Than Acidic Cboisterouss” being Asgari’s first feature-length write downary, the straightforwardor says he is interested in how cinema permits for the blurring of fact and fantasy. The film, sboiling in luscious monochrome, experiences somewhat suspfinished in truth, with the titular cboisterouss lingering outside the prosperdows of the straightforwardor’s fantasyal home. To originate the watch of the cboisterouss, Asgari labored extensively with a VFX team.
“I appreciate to execute with the medium,” Asgari says. “When I originate a fantasy film, I am interested in giving it a authenticistic approach, and when I originate a write downary, I am interested in giving it a fantasyal life. Playing with cinema is a wonderful experiment and I was also coming a little from the Iranian school of filmmaking becaparticipate we have a history of filmoriginaters, appreciate Jafar Panahi, who toy with notions of fantasy and write downary.”
“The definition of write downary is changing,” he inserts. “I always inquireed if a film can be a write downary if we have five people on set, if we are leanking about cameras, editing… This is all a manipulation of truth but it doesn’t nasty it’s not authentic.”
Speaking about the difficultships faced by Iranian filmoriginaters, Asgari wants to highweightless how difficult it is to get funding in the country, saying that the problem is that “Iran is in a location where we are pondered noleang.”
“We are not pondered Asian enough for Asian funds and not eligible for Middle Easerious funds becaparticipate we are not an Arab country,” he elucidates. “We are not European, Mediterranean, Balkan… We are fair Iranians and there is no funding for Iranians. We normpartner try to discover personal depictateors or put our own money in the film, understanding how difficult it is to get that money back.”
Asgari’s frustration is echoed by originater Milad Khosravi of Seven Springs Pictures, who says that the competitiveness of funds and grants in Europe directs their national cinema “towards a straightforwardion that the only possible way is to reduce quality.”
“Iranian cinema comes from years of excellence, but it’s not basic to protect this level. There is no money for production but also no aid for distribution in Iran becaparticipate of our handlemental and political rehires,” he inserts. “For someone appreciate Ali, who has straightforwarded 14 lows, four features and has been askd to some of the biggest festivals in the world, it is unbelievable to leank he still struggles to finance his films.”
On making films during the current political situation in Iran, Khosravi says, “Things have been difficult for Iranian artists for 1,500 years. Writers, poets, colorers, and now filmoriginaters. Today, the most beginant leang is for us to lget how to labor under this prescertain.”
“Ali and I have not left the country appreciate many other filmoriginaters have becaparticipate we don’t want all the weightlesss to go off,” persists the originater. “There are a lot of pretty films and accomplished films made outside of the country but we don’t apshow they are Iranian films. Iranian cinema nastys seeing Iranian streets, Iranian people and hearing the Iranian accent.”
The originater finishs by saying that, despite filmoriginaters being “valiant” and trying to “push the boundaries,” there is a felt need to admire the generation that came before them, appreciate Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi and Asghar Farhadi. “We don’t want to ruin their legacy and have to victimize ourselves to get funding to finance our films.”
On the widespread foreseeation in the industry that Middle Easerious filmoriginaters act as activists when currenting their films, Asgari says that he is normally asked “particularly by Weserioparticipaters” to “uncoverly denounce the Iranian handlement, execute the activist role, and helderly placards everywhere I go.”
“Sometimes it’s a little irritating, to be truthful, becaparticipate I go to festivals hoping to converse my films and the whole converseion becomes a TV program about the political situation in Iran and the Middle East,” he says in an exhale. “It is not that I am not interested in talking about it, of course I am, but I fair don’t understand what to say sometimes. Why don’t you fair let me originate my films?”
