Sofia International Film Festival

Hossein Keshavarz- We live in a globalization nowadays, but if you have to compare the problems of the young people in Iran and the problems of the young people in the Western world, where are the main differences?

If you asked me this a year or two ago, I would have said that there are not many differences.  Iranians are preoccupied by the same things that people in the rest of the world are preoccupied with – love, money, family. So most of the stories of the film are mundane – like a boyfriend and a girlfriend who are looking for a place where they can be alone together. The one main difference is that young people want much more freedom than the current system affords, yet they have been repeatedly frustrated in their attempts to gain it. In the film, this is shown by the character of Massoud, who basically only wants to drink and have fun with his buddies.  But then something happens and he snaps and starts attacking religious people, whom he sees as the
people in power. 

We shot the film before last year’s disputed presidential elections - but in a sense, the story has predicted what’s happened in Iran since the election. People wanted change, but were mainly content to go about their everyday lives. This changed when they felt that the election was stolen from them. Then all of the sudden, many apolitical people become very political.

Read the whole interview on our festival's sit www.siff.bg

11 March 2011