Official Selection, Hot Docs Film Festival
Official Selection, New Horizons Film Festival

Inside this traditional Iranian dating agency, the manager, Mrs. Sadri, and her female employees are determined to find their clients a husband — regardless of their personal feelings or preferences.

Shuffling through files and making agitated phone calls, they constantly remind their mortified customers that it’s the man who gets to choose and that a woman without a spouse doesn’t have an identity. Even a temporary marriage would be better than remaining unwed, they say. Which doesn’t mean these surprising brokers don’t harshly lecture their male clients as well, or that their conservative views don’t come with a good dose of humor — especially since two of them are, ironically, single.

Shot almost entirely inside the confines of their tiny office, The Broker conveys a sense of claustrophobia that mirrors many women’s situations and offers a shocking, tragicomic reminder that the fiercest agents of the patriarchy aren’t always men.

This film takes a historical look at the origin and development of the Grand Bazaar of Tehran which spans over ten kilometers and dates back to the medieval period. The Grand Bazaar of Tehran is still is one of the most vibrant centers of commerce in the country. The film compares and contrasts the past and present day methods of commerce and discusses the cultural, business and architectural aspects of the ever changing Grand Bazaar.

FINAL FITTING follows Mr. Arabpour, a master tailor with a specialty in religious attire. He has been the official tailor to the most important religious leaders of Iran for the past several decades, including the late Ayatollah Khomeini, former President Mohammad Khatami, and the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. It’s a fascinating story about the variations of the ‘Aba’ and ‘Ammameh’ (the turban and the robe) and how they can differ in style depending on the political inclination of the man wearing them.  The film showcases the changing cultural styles of Iran and its clerical elite through its portrait of one man and his time-honored craft.

Hollywood Reporter writes:

“Iranian expat documaker Mehran Tamadon brings a European sensibility and sense of humor to a surreal encounter he engineers by inviting four bearded defenders of the Islamic Republic of Iran to debate basic issues with him, like the need for women to wear headscarves and freedom of the press. Even if the outcome of their discussions is easily foreseeable, the concept is irresistible. Yes, there are small chinks in his guests’ ideological armor, but the East-West positions are discouragingly fixed. What would have made this small doc exceptional is some significant breakthrough in cross-cultural understanding, some off-guard moment of doubt, which never happens.”

Mehran Tamadon left Iran at the age of 12 and moved to France in 1984. The son of active Communists, he studied Architecture in Paris. In the year 2000, he returned to Iran for four years and worked as an architect. Since 2002, he has given his career a distinctly artistic orientation. During an exhibit of conceptual art at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, he showed an artistic installation called “From the eyes of a stroller”. In 2004 he made his first documentary, Behesht Zahra/ Mothers of Martyrs.  His fir long documentary, Bassidji (2009), is about the defenders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Basiji was screened at Docunight in April 2014.

A documentary about the Godars, Artist-Gypsies Living in Iran. The Godars are nomadic gypsies who migrated from India to Iran and share the same heritage as the gypsies who moved into Eastern and Western Europe and into the Middle East. This tribe speaks Chuleh, which is a combination of Sanskrit, Mazandarani, and Farsi. Their original religion, Animism, was based on the belief that natural objects and phenomena possess lives and souls. During the Islamic Revolution, they were forced to convert, and although they are now officially Shiite Muslims, they are still outcasts and considered infidels. Infidels recounts the four ways which the Godars make their living: dancing, acting, hunting and music, and showcases their dedication to preserve their art and age-old rituals. In this film, the Godars sing songs, play music, and tell the ancient tales of their heritage which often deal with their problems with God. Infidels is the first film record of the Godars, their lives, and their efforts to maintain the independence of their culture.

Despite the threat of mines, assassination, and death by dehydration and starvation determined Shiite Muslims as many as 3,000 a day, have been pouring across the Iran-Iraq border since the fall of the Iraqi government. They risk their lives for only one reason: to visit the holy city of Karbala, fifty miles south of Baghdad. This city houses the magnificent shrine of seventh-century leader Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhamed. Hussein died in a battle in 681, a martyr to the Shiite faith. The intense devotion of these pilgrims to Imam Hussein and Karbala astounds outside observers at the same time that it puts the Iranian government in a major predicament. Torn between bureaucracy and allegiance to Islam, Tehran is continually revising its emigration policies, periodically opening and then closing its border. Meanwhile, people are dying, and chaos reigns at crossing points.

Bahman Kiarostami (born 1978) lives and works in Tehran, as a documentary film director, editor, and cinematographer. He made his first documentary ‘Morteza Momayez: Father of Iranian Contemporary Graphic Design’ in 1996. Most of his documentaries focus on valuing and legitimizing processes in art, but also cover the visible yet obscured and unnoticed details which define Iran’s post-revolutionary visual culture.

For three years, Mehran Tamadon immersed himself into the very heart of the most extremist supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran (the Bassidjis) to understand their ideas.

Mehran Tamadon writes:

“In a desert, on a hill, men, women in chadors along with small children wander the large open-air ‘museum’ which stands in the memory of the martyrs of the Iran-Iraq war. It is Persian New Year and we are close to the Iraqi border. My guide is a man; big and charismatic – his name is Nader Malek-Kandi. For nearly three years, I have chosen to penetrate the depth of the world of the most avid defenders of the IRI (The Basijis), to develop a better understanding of the paradigm that motivates them. We are from the same country, and yet, we are complete opposites: Iranian living in France, atheist, the child of militant communists under the shah; I have everything required to knock down the convictions of those who respect the dogmas of the regime. Nevertheless, a dialogue binds us together. But between the games of seduction and rhetoric, within the real and sincere moments of the political and religious system that they defend, are our respective convictions ready to take a back seat so that we can come to understand one another?”