Tehran, the City of Love
Movie Synopsis
Director: Ali Jaber Ansari
Writers: Ali Jaber Ansari / Maryam Najafi
Starring: Forough Ghajabagli / Mehdi Saki / Amir Hessam Bakhtiari
Country/Region of Production: Iran / United Kingdom / Netherlands
Language: Persian
Duration: 102 minutes
Awards
9th Beijing International Film Festival Temple of Heaven Award (nominated): Ali Jaber Ansari
Synopsis
Mina is a receptionist at a beauty agency, and she is an obese middle-aged woman in reality. Eager for love, she met netizens by phone but never came out. Will she meet her true love this time?
Hessam was a former bodybuilding champion and now a fitness instructor, bored by his often dazed life, until a promising young student asked him to be his coach, he re-experienced the vivid presence of life, he also found the hidden excitement that he had never had in his life, will this fight have any results?
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?
Can seemingly miraculous encounters be fateful encounters and redemptions?
A fitness trainer with an actor's dream and seemingly about to come true, a single woman with an obese body but a desire for love, a mosque funeral singer who is abandoned by her fiancée and then tries to transform into a wedding singer. The slow shot, the symmetrical temperament, the sound after the silence, the three lonely people return to loneliness after some struggle. But there seems to be subtle changes happening in them.
Everyone has some secrets in their hearts. Mina calls the handsome guy in her picture on a date with a trumpet in order to satisfy her inner fantasies about romantic love. Every relationship ends in a sweet shop with soft music; Hesam goes around asking about Louis Garrell of France, establishing his upcoming actor status through a connection with him, but remains silent in the face of students who beat his heart; Wahid lies to prevaricate about meeting his future daughter-in-law's parents, and never again dares to tell her about his profession of singing for funerals after meeting the girl he loves.
When things move in a fairytale-like direction — Mina finally meets a man who is willing to chat with her in a love class; Hersam's favorite student grades gradually improve and the two build trust in each other; Wahid sings cheerful songs for her beloved girl and finally begins dating her — the director breaks it all up again. No love story is as sweet and smooth as a prince and a princess, and Tehran in reality is not a city of love at all, but a city of loneliness.
But who's to say that this fleeting feeling didn't bring some sweet ripples to everyone? Life returns to a deviated starting point, and this starting point is always closer to warmth than the original one. Three staggered time and space converge at a station under a night light, unaware that they are actually in a network of inextricable lonely people, and each lonely soul holds a full of love.