San Francisco Frontiers - 'Whatever we do is political' says Iranian director Asgari at Venice

The director of "Divine Comedy", part of last year's secondary competition, is back at Venice this season competing for the Golden Lion with "A Bit of Light," about a doctor in Tehran scarred by the violence inflicted on anti-regime protesters who decides to give up and end his own life.

"We live in a country where whatever we do becomes a kind of political act. So you can consider that sometimes simply having internet access becomes a political act," Asgari told a press conference ahead of the film's premiere.

"Cinema is the same; it is, in my opinion, a very powerful means of resistance," he said.

For years, in the face of heavy censorship and prosecutions, Iranian directors like Jafar Panahi, Asghar Farhadi and Mohammad Rasoulof have been winning Oscars and European awards with films about life in the Islamic republic.

But since attacks by the United States and Israeli began in February, already harsh restrictions on Iranians following anti-government protests believed to have killed thousands of people have only increased.

The despair and numbness endured by the film's protagonist is what Iranians are going through in the wake of the war, said the film's cast and crew.

"Over the past year -- between the massacre inflicted upon the Iranian people and the war that has broken out -- we have become somewhat numb. We are anaesthetized, as if we can no longer feel a thing," said Shadmehr Rastin, who co-wrote the film's screenplay with Asgari.

- Cinema as weapon -

A feeling of powerlessness is at the root of Iranians' feeling of numbness, said lead actor Misagh Zareh.

"Even when I post something on my personal Instagram page protesting against an execution, the next day I am summoned," he told journalists.

"This inability (to act) creates more despair, more powerlessness, and then numbness," he said.

Zareh said he was forced to live outside Iran for eight months after his last film.

After returning, "in the year and three months that I was in Iran, I saw two wars and one repression that turned into a nationwide massacre in Iran. Alongside that repression came one crisis after another -- economic, social," he said.

Still, he said, cinema had been "turned into a weapon".

"A weapon for us who use this art to stand up against censorship and everything that is happening, and to try to resist," Zareh said.

Producer Milad Khosravi said every element of trying to make a movie in Iran today was complicated and rife with consequences.

"Just thinking about how to cover the basic costs of production, then obtaining permission or finding a way to at least be able to bring a camera out into the street, to gather a small crew of four or five people in the street to shoot --and then to deal with the consequences that follow," he explained.

Filmmakers, writers and other intellectuals are "constantly under pressure," Khosravi said.

"And after all these miseries -- or rather, it’s better to say difficulties -- a war was added to it as well, a war that increased the restrictions."

I.Wright--SFF