Sundance film festival: an underground scene of creatives in Tehran is threatened in this lived-in hangout movie that bravely chooses optimism over negativity
It’s a summer evening in Tehran, and the streets of the Iranian capital are lively. A young creative couple, an actor and a dancer, coolly take in a performance from a band of street musicians. “This country is so full of artists,” the man, Ali (Farzad Karen), says to Hanna (Hana Mana). She replies warily: “Let’s see if they stay like this.”
The remark is delivered casually in Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz’s stirring new film The Friend’s House Is Here, sprinkled in between airy banter and snippets of various rehearsals, but it’s no trivial matter. Under Iran’s theocratic regime, creative expression is a risky and unstable endeavor. The government tightly polices the contents of all art – visual works, theater, music, film, literature – for strict adherence to state ideology. Failure to receive a permit could result in fines, imprisonment or banishment. The colorful characters amiably populating this loose, organic film, played by a collective of real-life underground artists and improv actors, are liable to be harassed, fined, arrested or disappeared at any moment.
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