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A rich variety of Iranian films in the past year have captured the attention of French audiences eager for a glimpse inside a largely inaccessible society. The strength of these offerings, combined with the relatively low cost of their production, has led to a Golden Age of Iranian cinema in France.
In a breathtaking chase through the maze-like backstreets of Tehran, a police officer hunts down a crack dealer, who ends up in a concrete mixer. Such is the climax of Saeed Roustayi’s “The Law of Tehran”, a movie characterised by the frenetic dialogue of its unstoppably loquacious characters and the most popular of a wave of Iranian films to have captivated French cinephiles during the past year – with more than 150,000 tickets sold since its release in July.
This kind of success in French cinemas for an Iranian film would have been “unimaginable 20 years ago”, said Asal Bagheri, an expert on Iranian cinema at Cergy Paris University.
“The Law of Tehran” is far from the only Iranian film to have made a splash recently. Others include “The Pardon”, about a widow in her 30s trying to uncover the truth about her husband’s execution for a crime he did not commit; “There Is No Evil”, relating four different narratives about the death penalty; and “A Hero”, about a man imprisoned for being unable to repay a financial debt and desperately trying to get out.
“These films exhibit a certain social realism; they’re very down to earth in their portrayals of beleaguered individuals in a society caught between the demands of tradition and modernity,” Bagheri said. “And French people are very curious about what daily life in Iran looks like; the media doesn’t really show this aspect, while it’s difficult to travel to Iran at present.”
This realist style is hardly a new development in Iranian…
Source : france24
