Iranian films are generally adept at cutting to the chase from tiny points such as individuals or families, revealing deeper social problems and life dilemmas to awaken emotional resonance and human exploration. Here, a shortlisted film for the Tiantan Award of the 9th Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF), is threaded upon the story of an old man, adopting a realistic camera language to make the audience feel the storm surge of complex emotions and a deep pursuit of life behind the simple and quiet pictures.

　　The film narrates a sad story that happens in an alpine pasture in Iran. It is night and everything is happening in an endless silence. The lonely and tired old man is walking around. His restlessness proves how deeply he's been obsessed with his problems and agonies. He's thinking of saving his son, Sohrab. However, all doors are closed. He's involved in cycle of daily life, though decided, he's not able to change anything. He's fighting and then returning his grandson back home and baptizing him. In spite of all his efforts, the son is executed. He takes the body of his son, which looks like a white poplar tree, through the mountain and rivers and baptizes him. The old man takes care of his grandson too before he returns to bury his son. He goes back home, drinks some water and sleeps.

　　The whole story is quite simple, but conveys tremendous emotional power behind the film through the director’s ingenious shots. The film is fascinating, while retaining significant moderation and calmness. Such a highly skilled directing technique comes from the director Hadi Mohaghegh who is a native of Iran. With the background of serving as a motor mechani Hadi Mohagheghc, he started his artistic career in 1990, and directed his first feature film Bardou in 2013. His second feature film Immortal (2015) won New Currents Award, Fipresci Award, and other awards at the 20th Busan International Film Festival, the 14th Pune International Film Festival, the Yerevan International Film Festival and the International Film Festival of Asia Pacific, and was nominated for the Forward Future Section of the 6th BJIFF. As with Immortal, Here also tells a story of a family’s sadness and helplessness from the perspective of the elderly. Notable are a large number of full-length shots in the film, which are no longer simple symbols or techniques, but the most intuitive world itself to contain enormous emotional power. In addition to personality traits of the characters that are expressed at a right level, even the distinctive sense of religion is empowered with sacred and true power behind such full-length shots.

　　Though the actor Hamdollah Azizi as the elderly is a non-professional actor, his professional and sophisticated performance in front of the camera is extremely artistic. The old man lives in a mountain of northern Iran and is self-sufficient. Gerontic and rickety, he spares no efforts to save his son Sohrab. The pain in his eyes is a summary of his long life, and mixed with care for his grandson. The focus of the relationships among the three generations is mainly on the old man, from whom the problems and helplessness in them can be reflected.

　　The interplay of the objective shots and subjective shots is also a major highlight of the film. A legion of freeze-frames, which shows the world in the eyes of the miserable and helpless old man as well as the dying nightingale, the valley with rocks, and the flock of sheep moving around that are displayed in an objective manner, are assembled together to bring a sense of visual bouncing and continue the unity of internal affections at the same time. The clipping and stitching of fragments of life enhances the representation of emotions in the context of poetic natural landscapes and vast spatial fields. Such an indelible representation is also to show the delicate balance between life and death the old man is still looking for in despair and continued life when the fate of the three generational men in the family is unrelentingly placed on his shoulders. Perhaps, nothing matters except life and death.

　　【Screening Information】

　　6:15 PM April 19 (Friday) Emperor Cinemas (including the Meet-and-greet with Cast & Crew)