Dry Branches of Iran

Poetic docufiction. One day, a young Iranian dancer wakes up in a prison cell in Tehran, trying to remember how he ended up there. The screening is followed by the international premiere of Recall Your Birthday, a dance show that was produced under censorship in Iran. The show will be staged again for the Movies that Matter Festival, yet under different circumstances this time. Film and dance come together in So You Think You Can Dance in Iran.

As a tribute to revolution tools YouTube and Facebook, the film was fully and secretly shot using telephone cameras. In a small cell in the Tehran prison, a young dancer has difficulty recalling the events leading up to his arrest. In flashbacks we see how his work as a performer had been censored by the government because of too explicit body contours and a surplus of physical contact with his male co-star. What’s more, he took part in the anti-government protests and deserted from the army, only to join back up reluctantly. Confused and full of questions, the dancer tries to reconstruct the events. How did he end up lying on the floor of the small prison cell, covered in blood? What happened to his family members, and do they know where he is? The flashback scenes are played by Iranian actors, whose faces are hidden, for fear of reprisals.