Falling House

The bulldozers are already at the door, but Rashid refuses to budge. His modest house on the edge of Tehran has to make way for a new expressway. Inside, too, his world is crumbling: the prison guard is suspended from duty, and his eldest daughter Ensi is secretly planning to leave the country to work as a model in Turkey. For Rashid this is betrayal. He does everything in his power to stop Ensi from carrying out her decision. As the bulldozers draw ever closer, the tensions within the household escalate further.

Director Mohsen Gharaei (“Blockage”) turns this claustrophobic experimental set-up into a parable of present-day Iran that is as furious as it is oppressive. Outside, bulldozers are changing the city; inside, a father tries to save his authority against the will of the women. The doors stay locked, the rooms grow tighter, and every conversation becomes a struggle for the right to determine one’s own life. In this way Gharaei shows how the violence of a political system reaches into the most intimate family relationships. What Rashid experiences as the end of his world could be the beginning of Ensi’s own. Above all, actor Laleh Marzban gives the deep longing for freedom a haunting form. For her performance as Ensi she won the Best Actress award in the Orizzonti competition at Venice.