ON THIS PAGE:
- Boomerang
- Antikvariati / The Antique
BOOMERANG – debut feature
BOOMERANG – debut feature
Germany, Iran. 2024. Directed by Shahab Fotouhi. Starring Arash Naimian, Yas Farkhondeh, Ali Hanafian, Shaghayegh Jodat. Running time 83′.
Two teenagers falling in love in the public eye while a woman separates from her husband could be a rom-com theme. However, as the film is set in Iran, the perspective changes drastically. Boomerang is the polished debut by Shahab Fotouhi (already directing photography in Faraz Fesharaki’s documentary Was hast du gestern geträumt, Parajanov? in 2024). In his debut feature, Shahab Fotouhi uses the editing collaboration of Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze to paint a sociological snapshot of modern Tehran. Over a week, Boomerang narrates in parallel the end of the marriage of two people belonging to a seemingly hopeless and defeated generation and the love story just beginning between two young people who, in a new way, are discovering the city and its political realities.tra due giovani che, in modo nuovo, stanno scoprendo la città e le sue realtà politiche.
Oscar Cosulich
THE ANTIQUE, THE DIRECTOR: ‘THEY ARE UNDER CENSORSHIP’
‘We are disconcerted”: with these words, Venice Days President Francesco Ranieri Martinotti opens the meeting that was supposed to be the Q+A for The Antique (Antikvariati) by Georgian director Russudan Glurjidze. The movie has been blocked following a decree issued by the Venice Court on the basis of a dispute brought by minority producers (including the Russian Viva Film) concerning copyright on the screenplay. The last scheduled screening of The Antique, on 6 September, is still suspended. ‘We can’t tell our story,’ said the director who, not going into the technical-legal details of the affair, gives a political interpretation of the situation amidst the supportive applause of the auditorium (flanked by the film’s protagonist Salome Demuria) and launched an appeal to journalists:’ Please do your best to sensitise the film community and ensure that the screening takes place. I am in the heart of Europe, and I am under censorship. The Antique, after the Venice Festival, can become a ghost movie. We must protect it,’ says GoA General Delegate Giorgio Gosetti. ‘We are missing an opportunity,’ Martinotti points out, ‘to see an independent film whose story may bother some people, but these events happened’. The Antique is the story of the mass expulsions of Georgians from Russia in 2006. There is a suspicion that the shadow of the Moscow government is behind the protest that overshadowed the film. ‘Politics has something to do with it, a lot,’ Marina Fabbri explains:’ In the movie, an object, a wardrobe, is central. Wardrobes are closed but can also be reopened’.
Emanuele Bucci
