FORBIDDEN CINEMA: Teheran Taboo

Who remembers the famous Persepolis? Shown as part of Critics’ Week in Cannes, Tehran Taboo, like the renowned film by Marjane Satrapi, is an animation for adults and was created by an Iranian artist in exile. Its author, born in Shiraz but living in Germany, Ali Soozandeh, used the rotoscoping technique, which allows him to draw actors’ silhouettes into cartoon characters. Thanks to this, controversial topics breaking the title taboo gain a fairytale aura and become a universal story about a few people from Tehran. Among them we find a musician, Babak, who plays at underground parties and who has just got himself in trouble after having casual sex with Donya. There is also Pari – a mother of a young boy trying to get a divorce, but also a prostitute, protected by  her client, a judge. Her neighbours, a young married couple expecting a baby, also have secrets of their own. After all, the main character of the film is Tehran itself – on the one hand, a big city full of entertainment, on the other, due to the requirements of the religious regime, corroded by hypocrisy and making everyone live a double life. And what is hidden – dance and sex, abortion and drugs – is the topic of this shocking film.

Movie in Farsi with Polish and English subtitles.