Tehran Has No More Pomegranates
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by Massoud Bakhshi
color, 68 min, 2008
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Director Massoud Bakhshi and crew are on a mission to make a film about their hometown, Tehran, but have hit a wall and must explain to their overseers at the Documentary Film Center why the film will never be completed. They decide to investigate the city's past in order to better understand the reason for their predicament. What follows is a sarcastic and comic narrative about Tehran's transformation from a small village into a megapolis of increasing urban mess, pollution, inadequate housing, class gaps and the fatal destiny of its delicious pomegranates.
Tehran, narrates the director, was once a small village of fruit bearing gardens and exceptional pomegranates. Its inhabitants were illiterate, naïve and disease stricken people. Women were forced into marriage and the city lacked clean drinking water. Today, he sarcastically states, Tehran is "one of the biggest, most modern, most orderly, and law-abiding cities of the world".
The city's air and water are clean, the urban planning is perfect and women determine their own destinies!
A poll is conducted among the city's inhabitants and the majority is satisfied. All accept for Mr. Jafar. Jafar is a new city dweller in search of a better life in the big city, but has lost his belongings and has been homeless for three months. Director and crew found him spontaneously one day while filming on the streets. He contradicts all the wonderful transformations of the city.
Made over the span of five years, Tehran Has No More Pomegranates is both homage to what Tehran is and a lament for what it could never be. It archives never before seen footage from 120 years of Iranian history and places it against images of modern Iran. The film is, as the introduction declares "a musical, historical, comedy, docu-drama, love story, experimental film" that uses style and subject to capture the chaotic and paradoxical soul of one of the most wonderful cities of the world. It is a treasure awaiting for those who believe that non-fiction can come in many guises!
“An imaginative and engaging history of Tehran that uses a petulant barbed humor to deliver a steady stream of irony about this drastically transformed society ” — Deborah Young, Variety
“Laced with brilliant touches of humor and irony, it is an excellent example of how ingenious Iranian filmmakers are "shooting between the lines" to address sensitive issues.” — Saudi Aramco World (SO09)
“It's madness, deconstructing every notion of film, propaganda and history ” — AJ Schnack, "All These Wonderful Things"
“One of the most original and innovative films about a city that I've seen in a while... The film just floods over you — it plays out almost like a dream!” — Pamela Cohn, Still in Motion
“A testimony of the agitated life in the Iranian capital... colored by subtle irony. Probably the only resource to explain its controversial reality, modernization attempts, and the incorporation of western values. Tehran Has No More Pomegranates is far from the type of film that comes to one's mind when thinking of Iranian cinema” — O Estado de São Paulo
Film Festivals, Screenings, Awards
Nomination, Cinema Eye Award for Best Documentary Film, IFC 2009
Best Director, 25th Fajr International Film Festival, Tehran, Iran, 2007
Best Director, 11th House of Cinema Film Festival, Tehran, Iran, 2007
AVINI Prize for Best Documentary of the Year, Iran, 2007
Audience Award, CINEMA VERITE International Documentary Festival, Tehran, Iran, 2007
Cinema East Film Festival, New York, NY, 2007
CINEMA VERITE International Documentary Film Festival, Tehran Iran, 2007
13th Boston Festival of Iranain Films, Boston, MA, 2007
Drake International Film Festival, Naples, Italy, 2007
1001 Istanbul Documentary Film Festival, Istanbul, Turkey, 2007
30th Sao Paulo International Film Festival, Sao Paulo, Brazil
51st Cork International Film Festival, Cork, Ireland
IDFA, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2007
San Luis Cine International Festival Competition, Argentina, 2008
Move Media Right Festival, Thailand, 2008
MORELIA International Film Festival, Mexico City, Mexico, 2008
Santiago International Film Festival, Santiago, Chile, 2008
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, 2008
HOTDOCS Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, 2008
Planet Doc Review International Film Festival, Warsaw, Poland, 2008
Ecocinema International Film Festival, Athens, Greece, 2008
Doc Point Helsinki International Film Festival, Helsinki, Finland, 2008
AAA/Society for Visual Anthropology Film, Video & Multimedia Festival, 2009
Anūū-rū āboro - Peoples' Film Festival, Canada, 2009
Edinburgh: Filmhouse Cinema, 2009
Portland International Film Festival, Competition, 2009
All Roads International Film Festival, USA, Competition, 2009
Ghent Flanders International Film Festival 2008, Ghent, Belgium
36th Rotterdam International Film Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Ann Arbor Film Festival, MI, 2010
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