Berlinale Discussion board entry “Shahid,” the debut characteristic of Iranian-German filmmaker Narges Kalhor, has been picked up by Prague-based doc specialist Filmotor forward of its premiere at Swiss documentary competition Visions du Réel, the place it’s competing within the extra experimental Burning Lights part.
Described by Kalhor as a collective work between herself and different artists, together with a fancy dress artist and a painter from Iran, a German music composer and a choreographer from Berlin, “Shahid” shifts playfully between genres, difficult typical filmmaking guidelines.
Set in present-day Germany, the place Kalhor emigrated as a political refugee in 2009, the movie focuses on her want to formally take away the primary a part of her surname, “Shahid,” which implies “martyr” in Farsi and was inherited from her great-grandfather, in an act of feminist resistance to patriarchal buildings.
Throughout this course of, the actor who performs Kalhor travels again in time and meets her great-grandfather, however she additionally uncovers the true origins behind the title, which, it seems, was chosen by her great-grandmother when her husband was killed.
As Kalhor realizes – on display screen, throughout certainly one of a number of scenes the place she intentionally breaks down the third wall between filmmaker and viewer – that she is making the incorrect movie, she additionally involves the conclusion that she is aware of nothing about this great-grandmother.
“That’s the tip of the dramaturgy,” Kalhor tells Selection. “On this film, we’ve no area for the great-grandmother – she tells me this by means of AI animation. She says: ‘All you speak about on this film are the lads and your great-grandfather, however let me simply clarify my story,’” says Kalhor, referring to a scene the place the animated determine of her great-grandmother addresses her immediately.
“However we don’t know something about her – simply that she was Kurdish and altered her final title: I can’t make a film about her as a result of historical past is written by males about males,” provides Kalhor.
Whereas by no means taking itself too severely, the movie efficiently addresses a myriad of questions on patriarchy, range and narratives formed by male views. Requested whether or not her intention was to make a feminist film, she replies: “I hope so. I actually imagine that the sort of cinema we be taught is from males.
“I used to be a scholar of Abbas Kiarostami; right here [in Germany] I learnt from Michael Haneke, I’ve learnt from excellent filmmakers, all of them males. With ‘Shahid,’ I wish to write a brand new sort of feminist film that breaks the principles. It’s not nearly her [my great-grandmother] however about all of us. All of us have a surname, and it has a historical past. However I, as a lady, wish to change it, to rewrite it.”
Kalhor says she has by no means returned to Iran since leaving in 2009, when she utilized for asylum whereas visiting the Nuremberg Worldwide Human Rights Movie Pageant along with her movie faculty quick “Die Egge.”
The daughter of a senior cultural advisor of the then Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, her case attracted worldwide media consideration as she was granted asylum after just some months, whereas different refugees, together with the actors who play herself and her great-grandfather within the movie, needed to wait a number of years.
Kalhor addresses what she describes as Germany’s “refugee hierarchy” within the movie, in one other scene the place the actors are supposedly recorded criticizing her behind her again between scenes, calling her a Tehran “wealthy child.”
“I used to be granted asylum in simply three months due to my final title. The opposite Iranian guys – the actual victims of the Iranian regime – stayed for years with out papers, that’s the distinction between us,” she tells Selection.
“And for me, it was necessary to mirror this in my film, as a result of if I don’t criticize myself, it’s not truthful: There are VIPs like me, others have to attend for years, and others nonetheless are despatched again to their international locations.”
Whereas “Shahid” is her debut characteristic, it doesn’t mark Kalhor’s first go to to Visions du Réel, the place she already offered her shorts “Within the Title of Scheherazade” in 2019 and “Delicate Content material” final yr.
The movie has its worldwide premiere in Nyon on April 14.
The competition runs till April 21.
