CARELESS CRIME - JENAYAT-E BI DEGHAT

Iran 2020, feature film, 134 minutes, original language. Director & editor: Shahram Mokri

In August 1978, during the Iranian revolution, the Rex cinema in the southern Iranian city of Abadan was set on fire, killing over 400 people. Shahram Mokri takes this historical reference as a starting point and artfully and irritatingly links different temporal and narrative levels, thus creating many perspectives on the present. "Careless Crime" is the title of the film, which is to be shown in the Film Museum in the north of Tehran, while four men attempt to carry out an arson attack on that very performance. In another place, at another time, two female students are preparing an open-air screening of the film "Gavaznha" by Masound Kimiai, the same film that was being shown when the Cinema Rex went up in flames in 1978. Mokri succeeds in placing present and past, reality and fiction in manifold relationships with one another until the viewers can observe themselves while watching the film.