Screens August 6, 11

On paper, the premise of this film must have seemed simple: one atheist (Paris-based Iranian filmmaker Mehran Tamadon) hosts four conservatives in his mother’s house outside Tehran to spend a couple of days eating, sleeping, drinking tea and, most of all, discussing an imaginary Iran that can tolerate a plurality of views. Ha; fat chance. In practice, he tells us, it took three years and countless rejections before he found his willing co-conspirators in what amounts to a slab of constructed “reality” a la Big Brother (Big Mullah, perhaps?). When one of them asks why it was so hard – “we want the West to hear our views” – Tamadon doesn’t really have an answer, and that is just one of the puzzlers that hangs over proceedings: are these men hardliners, moderates or somewhere in between?; will there be repercussions for any of the five participants?; is there any point, really, in trying to reason against unflinching faith? The last is the question at the heart of the film and while it seems fair to say no-one’s mind is fundamentally (whoops) changed, there’s a surprising rigour and humour all round that makes the process fascinating to watch regardless.

Mehran Tamadon, right, tries to convince his guests of the merits of a secular society in his film Iranian, screening at MIFF 2014.

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