THE LOCUST

Iran, 2022, 78 minutes, Colour.

Hanieh Tavassoli, Pegah Ahangarani, Pedram Sharigi, Shirin Aghakashi.

Directed by Faezeh Azizkhani.

This is a small film made by a writer-director who had made only one film previously, seven years earlier. This is a film about the difficulties in getting a film made.

The film opens with a five minute sequence in a car, echoes of Abbas Kierostami, a screenwriter driving to pick up her producer, talking to camera, watching a policeman riding a bike, continually passing him. She then picks up the producer, and difficulties begin.

The couple arrives at a home, various members of the production having gathered, the rest of the film illustrating the difficulties, the contradictions, the power struggles, people shouting at each other, members of the family criticising the writer for her perspectives on the family, the arrival of her mother, the tension with her mother, the issue of selling the house to raise money – and, when there might have been some kind of movement towards agreement and the possibilities of shooting the film, their financial producer is arrested for money deals and embezzlement.

There is no real solution to the dilemma. The film can’t be made. The writer, with something of a prickly personality, easily alienating others, clashing with her mother, has a loud scream of frustration.

There are voices, her ghostly father, and symbolic rooster strutting around the house. However, as the family and the others begin to disperse, she has some kind of reconciliation with her mother. She is then seen driving again, passing men on bicycles, one carrying a bargain basket of roosters.

It would seem that the only way the writer-director can get a film made is making a film about her struggles.