After a plebiscite in his home country, the second film by Iranian director Saeed Rustayi, Tehran Law, Finally leave the Persian lands to invest our cinemas. Released at the start in 2019 and winner of the Grand Prix of the Police Film Festival this summer, the film traces the interplay of drug addicts, police and drug traffickers. It's a crazy race to get rid of the big cups of a trade that doesn't save the Iranian population, hit by an explosion of consumption of crack. The original title of the film speaks for itself: Metri Shesh Va Nim, « Just 6.5 » which refers to the 6.5 million crack consumers per 83 million inhabitants. 6.5 also refers to the price of mortuary sheet that would cost more than the fabric to dress up. Figures that give vertigo and probably below the tragic reality.
Death in the Kits
One of the film's dialogues opposes two police officers exhausted by this relentless hunt and the pressure exerted by the Iranian authorities. What's the point of fighting a hydra every day? The old cop disillusioned by years of tough interrogations – and very unscrupulous of the rights of the defendants – questions his colleague about the explosion of consumption since his entry into the police. The film is in the image of the first scene: a race-prosecution between a drug dealer and a peacekeeper. At all speed, the merchant of misery marches between the streets of Tehran. While he takes a little lead over his pursuer, he tries to get rid of the cam he was carrying by throwing it over a grill. Failed, the package falls to the ground. The kid's getting away while the cop picks up the junk. In the rush, the kid climbs over a construction gate and falls despite him into a hole. In the roughhaha of the machines, a tractor sweeps the earth and finishes without knowing it the young, buried alive, far from the eyes and caught up in a deaf death.
This tragic incident will harm the local police. The authorities are calling for a culprit, some of whom are suspected of having let the smuggler go, which would have allowed the trail to be traced back to larger fish. Throughout the film, the striking dialogues fuse and lead drum beating the plot, which leaves little respite to the spectator. The ambivalence between the executioner and the victim is permanent and the tipping point is particularly unstable, while the precarious nature of human rights is subject to infamous pressure and blackmail. Tracing his family, lover or neighbor and at what cost? Following an expeditious trial, the presence of a lawyer appears only at the last quarter of the film. Presence as fleeting as it is useless for the rights of convicts in advance.
21 grams
Writing and the fulgurance of the exchanges between police officers and small strikes offer a frantic rhythm to the film. We are suspended from each dialogue, while blackmail is the key to a whole system subjected to violence. Here, no need for shootings, death hovers on everyone, from the little hat that risks the death penalty for possessing a few grams of crack to that of a policeman who would yield to the wine pots that are offered to him. In Iran, the punishment for possession of drugs is the same as one has 30 g or 50 kg on oneself, "What does it change?" asks one of the traffickers while the police seek his motives. « I was hungry. » He pleaded in his favour. Merchants of misery or the misery of the merchant is one of the fundamental questions that animate the work. The beatings carried out by the police in the ghettos, however, point to the fact that the risk of being carried out particularly affects the least privileged members of society, as shown by the regular reports Amnesty International. Iran alone is responsible for 56 per cent of all executions recorded in the Middle East and North Africa, while on average there is an international decline in this archaic practice.
« Those who believe in the deterrent value of the death penalty ignore human truth. »
Tehran Law shows the failure of a vain repressive system, from its claustrophobic cells to the gallows. We suffocate with the prisoners in a wet and overcrowded police station, where exit offers little chance of freedom. While the death penalty has been privileged and in explosion since 2010 due in particular to an explosive social climate, this does not seem to stem the phenomenon which is accelerating. Young filmmaker Saeed Roustayi counters the polar and obstacles of censorship he probably had to cross to publish and export his feature film. After the troubles suffered with the permissions of shootings spread over more than seven months and the demands for cuts by the regime, it was the narcotics brigade that sought to prevent its release...
Far from a basic action film or shock scenes on torture, the director chose to deliver a social film to the closest to the characters, which we follow in turn. The director, initially noted for his documentaries, sought authenticity by collecting testimonies even in the police stations and working with real drug addicts for certain scenes. We sail between Samad, the policeman, and Nasser, the dealer. The writer and director concedes in a maintenance their social proximity
« These two characters are the two sides of the same medal. What I think is important is that they both come from the same social class. »
Saeed Roustayi précise même qu’il avait tourné « une séquence -supprimée au montage- qui nous faisait comprendre que Samad habite dans le quartier où se trouvait la maison natale de Nasser ». Ces deux personnages devaient à tout prix être crédibles, « qu’on leur donne raison ou tort. Chacun d’eux croit en lui-même et estime qu’il a raison d’agir comme il le fait, même s’il sait qu’il n’a parfois pas eu le choix. » précise-t-il encore. Difficile donc de trouver un personnage principal puisqu’on comprend assez vite que le sort des uns et des autres est soumis à un châtiment semblable : la peur. Celle des pauvres rabattus dans des cellules étouffantes, celle des policiers soumis à la corruption permanente ou la suspicion, celle des juges qui appliquent une loi inique et aveugle. Le dénominateur commun : l’absence de moyens et la faillite d’institutions destinées à pérenniser un régime autoritaire. En filigrane et à la lecture des interviews de cette nouvelle vague d’artistes animés par la question sociale, on lit parfois la peur du milieu culturel qui mène un chemin de croix pour braver la censure du régime. Dans Tehran Law, la vivacité des dialogues tranche avec l’épée de Damoclès qui plane sur chacun : la peine de mort, châtiment ultime ou vertu supposée résoudre toute situation déviante. Une impasse mortifère a priori tranchée chez nous et qui mène ailleurs droit au gouffre, à l’instar de la remarquable scène d’ouverture.
Belle plume !!!
Une critique très complète à la fois sur le film mais également sur l’histoire de ce pays !
Thank you!
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