Cinema: «Divine Comedy» in Ilanz

Bahram is a globally celebrated filmmaker, but his new film is not allowed to be shown in Iran. Together with his producer and partner Sadaf, he wants to secretly bring it to the people. On a pink Vespa, they cross Tehran and embark on a playful and political journey through a Dantesque underworld. After his trenchant episodic film Terrestrial Verses, Ali Asgari tells with subtle humor of state domination, creative cunning – and of cinema as an act of resistance.

After Bahram's latest film was a success abroad, he applied to the Ministry of Culture for a screening permit in his home country. He doesn't want his blue-haired producer and partner Sadaf to come to the important conversation, that would be too much of a provocation. But even so, his wish remains unheard during the grueling conversation. In order to escape the confines of the state, Bahram and Sadaf seek out a smug cinema maker, a shady acting star and a wealthy animal rights activist, in whose living room the projection is finally to take place. He almost thinks he has reached his modest goal, but the state is watching.

Ali Asgari endows Bahram and Sadaf with unwavering patience on their precarious journey of purification and gently exposes a system that is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. He juxtaposes static image compositions in official offices with bright citizens who cunningly weave their way through all kinds of obstacles. He underlines this duality with a look at the world of cinema itself: he has characters appear as filmmakers who choose different paths between adaptation and resistance and – one of the film's many self-reflections – play fictional versions of themselves. Peppered with cinematic references from Moretti to The Matrix, this Divine Comedy is an act of subversive resistance and liberating cheerfulness.