Producers discuss increased challenges being faced by Iranian filmmakers With war still ravaging Iran — six months after the country was attacked by U.S. and Israeli forces — the Venice Film Festival is set to launch two Iranian films that will provide viewers vivid on-the-ground insight on the conflict’s societal impact as the country contends with bombs and its repressive regime. Ali Asgari, who was in Venice Horizons last year with dark satire “Divine Comedy,” is set to return to the Lido — this time in competition — with “A Bit of Light,” a drama featuring “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” star Misagh Zareh as a doctor who loses faith in the future after being arrested by Iranian authorities and having his medical practice in Tehran shut down. God forbid they should shatter and hurt you.” Then there is Mohsen Gharaei’s Horizons player “Falling House,” which follows a modest family on the outskirts of Tehran who face the imminent destruction of their home as part of a vast redevelopment project.
How does it transpire in your family? How does it transpire in the choices you make for yourself?” These timely Iranian films were both shot surreptitiously in Iran in what Rae calls “the country’s final spurt of creativity before being battered by the war.” To get permits to shoot “Falling House” in Tehran, the film’s lead producer Milad Khosravi — an Iranian who now runs his Seven Springs Pictures production company out of Istanbul — had to “manipulate the script that we gave to government,” he says. Then, after a roughly 70-day shoot, they got the footage out of Iran just before the war started and did the post-production, and a few additional scenes, in Germany.
Khosravi, who is also the lead producer on “A Bit of Light,“ says that when the U.S. first attacked Iran in February, physical production of Asgari’s new film had to be moved outside of the country. Khosravi, Asgari and Gharaei, who are now living in exile outside Iran, will all be in Venice for their films‘’’ bows. But it’s very doubtful that they will be able to promote them in the U.S. due to the country‘s travel bans.
Khosravi foresees that he will have the same problem. That said, the producers have high hopes that “A Bit of Light” and “Falling House” will get U.S. distribution. CAA Media Finance is handling U.S. rights on “Falling House,” while Paradise City Sales is repping international sales.
Both Rae and Khosravi underline that “there won’t be another film on the scale of ‘Falling House’ coming out of Iran for years,” as Rae puts it. I am trying to keep this bridge between Iranian cinema, and global cinema and financiers and festivals, because I feel a responsibility to keep this cinema alive.”
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