International Courant
Berlinale Discussion board entry “Shahid,” the debut function of Iranian-German filmmaker Narges Kalhor, has been picked up by Prague-based doc specialist Filmotor forward of its premiere on the 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 dressing up artist and a painter from Iran, a German music composer and a choreographer from Berlin, “Shahid” playfully shifts between genres, difficult standard 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 nice -grandfather, in an act of feminist resistance to patriarchal constructions.
Throughout this course of, the actor who performs Kalhor travels again in time and meets her great-grandfather, however she additionally discovers 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 one in all 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 is the top of the dramaturgy,” Kalhor tells Selection. “On this film, we now have no area for the great-grandmother – she tells me this by AI animation. She says: ‘All you discuss on this film are the boys 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 do not know something about her – simply that she was Kurdish and altered her final title: I can not 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 critically, the movie efficiently addresses a myriad of questions on patriarchy, variety 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 realized from Michael Haneke, I’ve realized from excellent filmmakers, all of them males. With ‘Shahid,’ I need to write a brand new sort of feminist film that breaks the foundations. It isn’t 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, need 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 Competition together with her movie college brief “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 only a few 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 is the distinction between us,” she tells Selection.
“And for me, it was essential to mirror this in my film, as a result of if I do not criticize myself, it isn’t honest: There are VIPs like me, others have to attend for years, and others nonetheless are despatched again to their nations.”
Whereas “Shahid” is her debut function, it doesn’t mark Kalhor’s first go to to Visions du Réel, the place she already introduced her shorts “Within the Identify 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.
