filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof continues his fight for freedom of expression

THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT

Golden Bear in 2020 at the Berlin Film Festival, the eighth feature film by persecuted director Mohammad Rasoulof, shot clandestinely in order to bypass Iranian censorship, reflects on the application of the death penalty and the collective guilt that results from it .

Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers A Berlinale more daring than its record

In four independent stories, but thematically echoing each other, the filmmaker paints a broad panorama of Iranian society, from the capital, Tehran, to the countryside, passing through the remote villages of the province of Gilan, in the North. Four stories of conscientiousness taking or objection, in which everyone, from the most banal father of a family, to young engaged couples meeting on the occasion of a leave, is likely to have blood on the hands, can turn out to be executioner or victim.

Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, “I am boycotted”

Notwithstanding his heroic fight for freedom of expression, or rather because of it, Rasoulof is a filmmaker of the “want to say” assaulted. Each of the stories that make up the film is thus weighted down by a scriptwriting coup, as if by sparing a fall heavy with meaning, which ultimately ends up making them artificial. Too bad, because the insistence of a glance, a forbidden gesture or the nudity of a landscape sometimes say more than any desire for speech.

Read also: Mobilization around Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof

German, Czech and Iranian film by Mohammad Rasoulof. With Ehsan Mirhosseini, Kaveh Ahangar, Mohammad Valizadegan, Mohammad Seddighimehr (2:30).

source site-19