THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – TO SEE
He shoots amazing films in Iran, given the political lead that weighs on the country, and more particularly the meticulous cinematographic censorship. It always has been (Abbas Kiarostami was the most shining example), and it continues to be. Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof (both recently released from prison), continued, from the time when they were under house arrest, to shoot free films, so many libels wrapped in fables, like madmen. Tehran Lawa percussive thriller filmed in 2019, once again revealed in Saeed Roustayi an admirable young filmmaker, revealing, to everyone’s surprise, the underworld of Tehran.
Today it is Emad Aleebrahim Dehkordi’s turn to make us discover, contrary to Saeed Roustayi, a reality that is unfamiliar to us, the beautiful neighborhoods of Tehran, in which he inscribes a tense and decadent fable. Born in Tehran in 1979, the filmmaker has been living in Paris for several years, but he has returned to his country many times to film there.
Two young men are the heroes. Iman, hot-headed, and his younger brother Payar, square, legit, Thai boxing champion. The two live with a sick father, a recent widower, whose authority is visibly melting away from a constantly overexcited Iman. Lover of illicit substances and dirty tricks, he can no longer bear to live in the impoverishment of a once bourgeois family home, disputes with his uncle a maternal inheritance that he seems to want to divert, organizes his life around the reconquest of a destiny he dreams of golden.
fury to live
Iman, the “bad boy”, his rotten motorbike that cleaves the night like an arrow, his rich friends from the upmarket neighborhoods, his little dope dealing with rich kids to make ends meet, it’s an Iranian dream that looks like something out of an American movie. A fury to live, an impatience, an appetite for social revenge and self-fulfilment. The feverish, syncopated, relentless movement of the film, as well, is that of Iman itself, whose violent propitiatory motorcycle accident, caused by a raptor, planted in her path as it is launched at full speed in the night, will not serve him as a lesson.
The meeting of a beautiful girl during an evening, the girlfriend of a young heir whose father owns half of the city and who plays the caïd, will soon precipitate the fate under the threat of which the film unfolds. The intensity of Iman’s character undoubtedly ends up creating an imbalance in the dramaturgy, the director endeavoring to make other characters exist – Payar, his brother; her friend Hanna, who made her life in France; Rouzbeh, Iman’s friend, sprawled in a decrepit apartment – without managing to give them a dynamic of their own that would really contribute to the plot. Apart from this reservation, the ambition of Black Knightbetween class struggle, contemporary thriller and Greek tragedy, is to the credit of its author, and what he shows us about Iran is, in many respects, unprecedented.
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