The Absent Director

by ARVAND DASHTARAY (IR, 2021, 86')

Drama, Experimental

Synopsis 

In one continuous take, the film follows the various members of a young Iranian theater company during their secret rehearsals of Macbeth at their director’s home in Tehran, while he works with them remotely from Paris via video call. Their dream is to submit the play to the Edinburgh Theater Festival on time, but things get complicated when their personal conflicts escalate and their hidden agendas come to light. The heated tensions reach their climax when a mysterious tragedy threatens to bring their work to a complete halt.

The complex layers of their reality slowly unravel as the film seamlessly fuses the past with the present, the fiction with the non-fiction, even blurring the lines of reality with the actors performing as themselves.

Credits

Director: Arvand Dashtaray
Writer: Naghmeh Samini
Cinematographer: Peyman Shadmanfar
Producer: Hossein Akbari (Virgule FPAC)
Cast: Marene van Holk, Arvand Dashtaray, Azadeh Mirzaei, Diba Khatami et al.