THE “WORLD’S” OPINION – MUST SEE
Deeply linked to the modernity of Iranian cinema, Mehran Tamadon, although he has lived in France since adolescence, loves nothing more than formal experimentation, the impurity of genres, the twisting of forms and meanings. We thus see how he distinguishes himself from the regime to which he owes his exile. Combat documentary filmmaker, daredevil on the edges, he set out to meet, in 2007, in Bassidji, of this militia of young martyrs called to the Iraqi battlefield. In 2014, he imagined, in Iranianto lock himself in his home for two days with four mullahs, just to experience the virtues of a healthy dialogue with the enemy.
His taste for otherness and debate is close to a certain appetite for self-depreciation, not to mention dolorism, through which Tamadon would join, through Shiism, another dimension of Iranian spirituality. This devil of a man does not fear, in fact, to show himself silent, humiliated, defeated in the face of his adversary, the very condition, according to his dialectic, of giving himself a chance to touch his interlocutor, to reveal to him so to speak, his own humanity. Which has the gift of regularly putting some of its spectators, who insist that we do not discuss with our executioners but that we fight them, literally beside themselves. So that it is difficult, between democratic ingenuity and Socratic maieutics, to know in what sauce Tamadon is eaten.
Interrogation session
Two new examples – My worst enemy (released May 8) and Where God is not (May 15) – possibly taking things even further. The first of these titles sees the author pick up the thread of his filmed life where he left off at the end ofIranian, it’s been ten years already. He recalls that the security services had let him go back to France but had kindly suggested that he never set foot in the country again, as he would not be able to leave. It is a poor understanding of his Tamadon, who here presents his new idea: asking compatriots like him exiled in France to play the regime’s henchmen in a filmed interrogation session in which he would be the guinea pig, then present himself in Iran with this film under his arm to convince the security services to recognize him, the first step in a secret repentance that he yearns for.
We can see from here the laughable nature of the thing. Both from the point of view of the authenticity of the torture session and that of the probability of any questioning of their behavior by those who practice it daily. This is sharply pointed out to the author by his main companion in the film, the formidable Iranian actress exiled in France Zar Amir Ebrahimi – seen notably in THE Nights of Mashhad (2022), by Ali Abbasi, in which she played a journalist on the trail of a serial killer.
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