Director: Bahman Ghobadi
Screenplay: Bahman Ghobadi, Hossein M. Abkenar, Roxana Saberi
Producers: Bahman Chobadi, Mehmet Aktas
Starring: Negar Shaghaghi, Askan Koshanejad, Hamed Behdad
Year: 2009
Country: Iran
Running time: 106min.
(3.5/5)
Filmmaking in Iran is not the easiest thing in the world – everything has to be approved by the government in order to obtain the permits that would protect from arrest and harassment. And getting things approved by the Islamic Republic of Iran can be challenging. Director Bahman Ghobadi has been making films in Iran for ten years, and with this one, he’s found a subject that parallels the difficulties of producing Iranian films – producing Iranian indie rock.
The two main actors, Negar and Askan, are actual Tehranian musicians whose story insired Ghobadi and he decided to make a thinly fictionalized film about them, even leaving their names the same. In the film, following a stint in jail for performing without a permit, Askan wants to leave Iran in order to pursue their music with more freedom and more ability to express their thoughts and feelings. He and Negar meet a DVD bootlegger (Hamed Behdad) who may be able to help them obtain passports and visas. While those are in progress, the duo try to gather a band to do one underground performance to say farewell to Tehran and hopefully go with them when they leave the country.
From this basic premise expands a film about music, about the process of making and performing music, and about doing it in a place that stifles creativity while also forcing people to be more creative in other ways to get around the restrictions. As Negar and Askan search for musicians, they go from underground to rooftop to studio to barn, and we get to hear many shades of Persian-flavored indie music – from Belle & Sebastian-esque acoustic to hard rock to incendiary hiphop – most of it accompanied by impressionistic montages of Tehran, which Ghobadi as well as Negar and Askan clearly love even as they’re driven from it because of their art.
Yet, though the political situation is always present in the film by nature of its very plot, it isn’t emphasized overtly. Ghobadi said in the Q&A that he isn’t a political person except insofar as everything you do in Iran is political, simply because of how omnipresent and intrusive the government is. And that perspective is borne out in the film, which is really much more focused on the music and band-creating aspects of the story.
Hamed Behdad adds a welcome note of comic relief throughout as the fast-talking bootlegger, always ready to talk anyone into anything, and usually succeeding. Film buffs will get a lot of laughs out of his monologues, which reference anything and everything in film history, and his attempts to convince a police officer not only to let him go after he’s arrested for bootlegging banned films, but to watch the films in question and see if he doesn’t think they’re artistically worthwhile. His flamboyance, though, tends to make Negar and Askan a little more bland by comparison; they come to life mostly when they’re performing rather than during the narrative sections of the film.
In the film as a whole, I would’ve preferred a little more clear explanations of how the permits worked, and what was required to get them. I was a little lost at times as to how they could be planning this big show while also avoiding getting permits. It was interesting to hear the kinds of things they would have to change in order to get a permit, if they wanted to – add another female singer in addition to Negar (a band couldn’t have just one female singer), write happier songs, no politics. The film is short on story and bit uneven in tone (and abrupt in ending), but there’s enough underlying what we see to make it interesting, and I really enjoyed the music.
No One Knows About Persian Cats has been picked up by IFC, according to Ghobadi, for theatrical distribution in 2010. Negar Sheghaghi and Askan Koshanejad are currently in London with their band.
Filmed illegally in the Iranian city of Tehran, No One Knows About Persian Cats ventures into the underground world of Iran’s illicit music scene. Lurking on the margins of the city are rappers, metal bands and indie rockers – all playing music banned under Iranian law, but flourishing in underground venues and makeshift rehearsal spaces.
In Iran, we know only what the Western media and the national cinema willing to show us. Essentially, this inventory is limited to films whose form is exceeded only by the austere sets and two or three carriers, such as nuclear, earthquakes or popular uprising after the election presidential returning to the agenda at a cyclical rhythm. Iran is much more diverse and complex than this brief summary would have us believe. With the fifth film released in France by director Bahman Ghobadi, we have the opportunity to discover the urban youth of a country, whose lifestyle resembles more to ours, with one exception near critical.
The taking of a city much more modern than the Kurdish villages that Bahman Ghobadi was used to film in his previous films, are not intended to hide the discomfort of youth who live there. The contrast between Tehran city and a southern European whatsoever is contrary exacerbated by muzzling the artists faced protesters vaguely. This small detail changes every existential parameters of a youth who is not content just to consume the products from the West, but also wants to express himself through his music as he sees fit. The need for government permission operates as a sly way. But it conditions all the way to being, thinking and acting Ashkan, Negar and others. And it provides incidentally, by its undeniable importance, the reason for the dramatic plot.
For Persian Cats is primarily designed as a casual sequence of musical pieces, all intended to reflect the essence of the city that questions the protagonists, torn between wanting to leave and uncertainty about the feasibility of their plan. Formally, this movie is just a new beginning for Bahman Ghobadi, whose style we had not beaten far by his casual cool. Despite the serious nature of his subject, the film reminds us almost the beginnings of Cédric Klapisch, when it still knew how to tell a story any light not minor, as in When the Cat for example. Punctuated by a variety of clips and improvised little stylized, the story comes together to subjugate us by the look without prejudice it concerns a young Iranian lack of freedom and recognition.