Pusan 2003

Iranian cinema is changing!
by Youngseup Sim

The 9-day journey of the 8th Pusan International Film Festival was completed with the screening of PARK Ki-hyung's Acacia on the evening of October 10th. This year, PIFF, a film festival which focuses on Asian Cinema, introduced fresh innovative films from the various Asian countries, such as Japan, China, Iran and Thailand. What surprised me the most were the festival's exceptional hospitality and affection for Iranian films and the dramatic changes in Iranian cinema. From 16 Iranian invited films, including Jafar PANAHI's Crimson Gold and Alireza AMINI's Letter in the Wind and Tiny Snow Flakes, AMINI's Tiny Snow Flakes received the New Currents Award, the highest recognition for a new director in Asia. Moreover, the Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award was give to an Iranian filmmaker Mohsen MAKHMALBAF and the FIPRESCI Award (Prize of the International Film Critics) to an Iranian film Deep Breath by Parviz SHAHBAZI. Thus, once again Iranian cinema displayed its latent power through this year's PIFF. Among these excellent films, I'd like to recommend Parviz SHAHBAZI's Deep Breath, which offers a peek into dramatically changing modern Iranian society, for those who are interested.

Until now, many thought of Iranian films as innocent films portraying children's untainted world, such as Jafar PANAHI's The White Balloon and Abbas Kiarostami's Where Is the Friend's Home?. However, through Jafar PANAHI's The Circle and Marzieh MESHKINI's The Day I Became a Woman, which were introduced in previous PIFFs, I became aware of women's rights issues in Iran and its rising interest among Iranian filmmakers. However, this year more shocking truth about present Iranian society was revealed through Asghar FARHADI's Dancing in the Dust and Parviz SHAHBAZI's Deep Breath, which dealt with problems caused by free-love, runaways and crimes among prostitutes and youth.

In Deep Breath, which reminds me of Jean-Luc GODARD's Breathless in its similar title as well as its plotline, the film depicts the life of Iranian youth who find pleasure in seducing women and devote themselves to destruction and coercion. Unlike GODARD, SHAHBAZI does not invent a new style of filmmaking through this film. However, the comparable self-destructive actions of lost adolescent kids, in this case, in a particular setting of Iran as the backdrop, can be understood and sympathized with. Kamran and Mansour are two young kids who get evicted by their landlord when they could no longer pay their rent and are forced to move into a cheap motel. With no money in their hands, they steal cell phones, drop out of school and wreck their own car. When a woman, who has her car stolen by them, threatens to report them to her husband who is a judge, they threaten her back by saying they'll cut off her 'remodeled' nose. Through a series of such events, SHAHBAZI voices harsh criticisms of Iranian society and makes us wonder how he produced such a film in Iran. The great social turbulence caused by capitalism and the amplified gulf between rich and poor in Iranian society are no longer reachable by the healing power of the Koran. Parents still stress the traditional customs upon their children but the children view the meaning of customs as 'surrendering their own selves.'

Deep Breath is a film that plainly illustrates the current transitional period in Iranian cinema and/or Iranian society. As I watched these radical Iranian films that directly confront the internal problems of their society, I said to myself, the foremost aid that US must send to Iran is not their troops. It is their contagious capitalism and democratisation. In this year's Pusan International Film Festival, Deep Breath, a film that deals with the severe despair without losing its lyricism, is the most dramatic rudder that will distinguish the new wave and the reformation of the future Middle Eastern cinema.

Youngseup Sim
© FIPRESCI 2003

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