Shahid: Comedy, 2024, 84 minutes
A political drama and a desperate comedy at the same time, SHAHID is a personal film that questions all kinds of radical ideologies and doesn't always take itself too seriously.
From Bavarian bureaucracy and therapy to dancing with Iran’s past generations and their long shadows, its protagonist twirls through a heady autofiction.
Narges Shahid Kalhor is a director seeking to be rid of the “Shahid” (martyrs), who are too heavy a burden. That's when her bizarre great-grandfather appears. A man who was declared a martyr in Iran after his heroic death a hundred years ago and gave his descendants the honourable name ‘Shahid’. He wants to stop his great-granddaughter from carrying out her plan. The temporal levels intermingle and the director and actress find themselves in a nerve-wracking conflict. While the film formally jumps between reality, fiction, theatre and musical, everyone fails in their plans: The director at the obstacles of bureaucracy, the actress at the demands of the director, the great-grandfather at the will of the granddaughter and finally the film at itself. The film questions all kinds of radical ideologies - and doesn't always take itself seriously. Shahid is a personal film about the balancing act of reconciling oneself with the past, with the present and with oneself.
Directed by Narges Kalhor, starring Baharak Abdolifard, Nima Nazarinia, Thomas Sprekelsen, Carine Huber
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