IMAGINE

Night in Tehran. A young taxi driver (Mehrdad Sedighian) picks up passengers – and again and again the same woman (Leila Hatami), who each time seems to be someone different. Once she wants to scatter her brother’s ashes, once she is on her way to an archery competition, once she has just left a bridegroom standing at the altar, once she fears she is pregnant. Neither the two of them nor the film ever voices the contradictions between the rides. The driver has fallen in love with a woman he cannot have, and what we see could be his daydream. “Imagine” by Ali Behrad (Iran, 2022) is a nocturnal chamber piece set in a car, made of gaps that the audience must fill.

Iranian director Ali Behrad, making his debut with this film, forgoes a linear plot and relies entirely on atmosphere: street lights, conversations, the inside of a taxi as a stage for a love that plays out chiefly in the imagination. Leila Hatami carries the transformations with a light touch. 78 minutes, a love story by genre, a riddle by form. It premiered in the Semaine de la Critique competition in Cannes in 2022. “Imagine” was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2022.

Shown at the 2022 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2022 · Film Archive