"Tehran: City of Love" is one of the shortlisted films for the "Temple of Heaven Award" in the main competition unit of this year's Beijing International Film Festival, and unlike the iranian films we are familiar with, such as "Little Shoes", which is a film that focuses on the lonely hearts of urban men and women in modern Iranian society, director Ali Jaber Ansari uses fragmented narrative methods and alternative character settings to subvert people's traditional impressions of the city of Tehran, telling the story of three lonely people in the city. Everyone finds love stories in their own way.
Mina is a receptionist at a beauty agency, and she has a charming face and figure on social networks, a sexy and gentle voice, but in reality she is just an overweight middle-aged woman who eats ice cream all day. Mina longs for love, but she also understands that her appearance has doomed her to be doomed to true love. She met netizens by phone, but she did not dare to show up. Later, she finally meets a man who is willing to know the real her and share her story, and this man will be her Mr. Right?
Hessam was a former bodybuilding champion and is now a fitness instructor. Living with his father, he only felt that life was in a daze and he could not find the fun he wanted. It wasn't until a promising young student asked him to be his coach that he regained his sense of living existence and discovered the vague excitement he had never had in his life. For such excitement, he decided to stick with his job and refused the opportunity to go to Paris to participate in the works of well-known French directors, but will love and passion always be two-way?
Wahid, a religious funeral singer, was ruthlessly dumped by his fiancée, and he decided to follow his friend's advice and abandon his frustrated self in favor of becoming a wedding party singer to rediscover the meaning of life. However, can he successfully complete the singing in the wedding in a black suit? And can that seemingly miraculous encounter be a fateful encounter and redemption?
Such three protagonists do not know each other, but there are always some subtle intersections. Unlike the perfect protagonist in the traditional sense, the three of them have their own imperfections, and even convey a certain "mourning" culture that is entangled with various factors. They long for love, but they have a very difficult journey in the search for love; they want to live hard, but they fall into deeper depression after each courage. Such a setting is really not pleasing enough, but the subtle pleasure is that they who are not treated well by life have had good encounters in the film, and in seemingly depressed lives, at least at some time, they have obtained short-term happiness, and have simple and pure happiness.
The expression of sadness and healing in "Tehran: City of Love", and the expression of loneliness and warmth, is also closely related to the director's personal experience. Director Ali Jaber Ansari spent his youth in Iran, moving to Canada as a teenager and then to London to pursue his film dreams. Born in the East and learned in the West, this kind of growth and education experience allows the director to re-examine the city of Tehran with a different look and emotion, and also makes the film have a unique temperament that is different from traditional Iranian films in terms of audiovisual language.
The daily life of contemporary urban youth is increasingly tied to words such as "mourning" and "Buddhism", but "mourning" is not equivalent to negative energy, "mourning" does not mean despair, "mourning" culture is a gentle rebellion against the world, but also a call for love and warmth, and the warmth and happiness in life are therefore precious, which is the theme that the film "Tehran: City of Love" wants to convey to the audience.
If you have also been "lost" for a long time, it is better to try to be healed by this film.
【Screening Information】
18th April (Thu) 20:45 Emperor Film City (including Creator Meet&A)