Divine Comedy

Sharp satire by Iranian director Ali Asgari about the slow grind of censorship and the absurdity of repression. Bahram is a 40-year-old filmmaker whose films have all been banned by the Ministry of Culture. When his latest work is once again denied permission, he’s pushed to the edge of defiance.

Bahram has spent his entire career making films in Turkish-Azeri, none of which have ever been screened in Iran. With his sharp-tongued, Vespa-riding producer Sadaf by his side, he embarks on an underground mission to showcase his latest film to an Iranian audience – dodging government censors, absurd bureaucracy and his own self-doubts.

Real-life filmmakers Bahram and Bahman Ark, who have faced censorship, play fictionalised versions of themselves. Likewise, actress Sadaf Asgari – banned from working in Iran after attending the Cannes Film Festival for Asgari’s Terrestrial Verses – brings a subversive authenticity by playing herself. According to director Ali Asgrai, the humour in the film ‘arises not from comedy but from the absurdity of repression. The convoluted censorship system collapses under its contradictions. The characters respond with sarcasm and quiet wit – humour as endurance where rebellion is perilous. Making the film is itself resistance.’