Feature film IR 2020 135`
R: Shahram Mokri
D: Babak Karimi, Razieh Mansouri, Abolfazl Kahani, Mohammad Sareban, Adel Yaraghi, Mahmoud Behraznia
Students are shooting a film, the audience is waiting for a screening, four men want to make a statement and set fire to a cinema. Just like 40 years ago, when protests against Western cinema under the Shah started the revolution … The culmination was the infamous arson attack on the “Abadan Rex” in the south of the country, where 422 spectators died in the flames. Will it happen again now? And when is “now”? 1978 or 2020: The arsonists move through time levels like through doors, the narrative becomes unreliable – but what was before is true now: These men are determined to do anything.
Once again, Shahram Mokri proves to be a pioneer of a new generation in Iranian cinema: “Careless Crime” is visually strong, atmospheric, ambiguous and consistent – like “Fish and Cat”, for which Mokri received the “Orrizonti Award”, the innovation prize in Venice in 2014, and with which he was also a guest in Cologne.
