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 Rustayi specifies even that he had shot « a sequence, removed from the assembly, which made us understand that Samad lives in the area where Nasser's home was located. ». These two characters must at all costs be credible, « they are given reason or wrong. Each of them believes in himself and believes that he is right to act as he does, even if he knows that he has sometimes had no choice. » He says again. It is therefore difficult to find a main character since it is quickly understood that the fate of both is subject to a similar punishment: fear. That of the poor who have fallen into suffocating cells, that of the police officers subjected to permanent corruption or suspicion, that of the judges who apply an iniquitous and blind law. The common denominator is the lack of resources and the failure of institutions to sustain an authoritarian regime. In watermarking and reading the interviews of this new wave of artists animated by the social question, we sometimes read the fear of the cultural milieu that leads a cross road to brave the censorship of the regime. In Tehran Law, the vivacity of the dialogues contrasts with the sword of Damocles which hovers over everyone: the death penalty, ultimate punishment or virtue supposed to solve any deviant situation. One dead end a priori cut at home and which leads elsewhere to the gulf, like the remarkable opening scene.
Beautiful feather!!!
A very complete review of both the film and the history of this country!
Thank you!
[...] KillerS7ven's criticism of the law of Tehran, a race-continue towards the gallows [...]
[...] Communicable fear has many facets. First of all the obvious one of insurgents who risk summary execution or, « at best », to be victims of the persecutions of Basidjis, militia in charge of internal and external security of the country and ruthless branch of the guards of the revolution. But fear is reversible. And those who oppress are also targets for the eruptive Iranian youth. Through the double-edged power of the images, rioters are hunted and questioned by investigators like Iman, the father of the family promoted and quickly caught up with the grip of the prosecutors, for whom he must sign the acts of imprisonment without objection. This deaf fear was already seen at work in Tehran law up to the highest levels of the police (read our review). [...]
[...] After the Tehran Law of Saeed Rustayi or the Black Market of Abbas Amini, the Mashhad Nights of Iranian (and Danish) director Ali Abassi particularly stirred this year. « A father of a family embarks on his own religious quest: cleaning the holy city of Mashhad from prostitutes ». A journalist will then conduct the investigation to reveal the origin of the killer while the police are not in a hurry to resolve the investigation. The Nights of Mashhad reveals all the fractures of Iranian society, some of which will not hesitate to make the killer a martyr. Drawing from a true story, the film is a heartbreak on the transmission of mortiferous values by fundamentalism and religious fanaticism. A striking film from beginning to end. 🎟️🎟️🎟️🎟️ [...]