02/09/2024 - VENICE 2024: The debut feature by Iranian artist Shahab Fotouhi is a fascinating snapshot of modern Tehran with strong and free female protagonists

Yas Farkhondeh in Boomerang

Stop at a light, in the middle of the honking of cars and motorcycles, and at the two opposed sides of the road, a boy and a girl lock into each other’s gaze, observe each other, then start to make funny gestures at each other. Already from these first moments of happy flirting, one intuits that, with Boomerang [+see also:
interview: Shahab Fotouhi
film profile], we are not about to see the typical Iranian film. The debut feature behind the camera by Shahab Fotouhi, an artist from Tehran who trained in Germany and whose works have been exhibited around the world, is outside the canons. In competition at the 22nd Giornate degli Autori at the Venice Film Festival, it portrays Iranian society in its most modern form, staging strong and free female characters – and it does so through a mosaic of piece of daily life to recompose, events that don’t seem correlated and with a mix of different styles and temperatures.

Here are the two young people from the light, Keyvan and Minoo (Ali Hanafian and Yas Farkhondeh, also long time friends in real life), who we follow in their walk of acquaintance, fluid and light in the style of Nouvelle Vague, and in their never banal conversations. We then meet Sima (Leili Rashidi) and Behzad (Arash Naimian), who are Minoo's parents, in a curious and suspenseful scene in which Sima enters the house and notices that something forbidden is happening behind a door. Then there is Behzad who sees an old love of his, the firm and determined Sadaf (Shaghayegh Jodat), only to be told that he is chronically inert. Then there are men of all ages who at the bar converse about the current state of the country, in a comparison/clash between generations in a social realist cinema style, and then much more. Small details and fragments of conversation are repeated and bounce like a boomerang (hence the title of the film) from one scene to another. The narrative is not linear and we know almost nothing about the background of the characters.

​​What is clear, however, is that it is the women who lead the game. Sima is tired of her marriage to Behzad, a relationship that has become in her eyes a simple mutual support. “I don’t want to be afraid anymore,” she says in the face of her husband’s proverbial inertia, and leaves home. Minoo is a determined and lively teenager, who is discovering love, herself and the reality of her country. The city of Tehran is omnipresent with its architecture, its noises, its busy streets. In a charming scene, a young woman on a scooter snatches a beautiful bouquet of flowers from Behzad’s hands (which was intended for his wife), drives by and turns, clutching the bouquet and looking at the man with a look that is both sweet and proud. Boomerang is one of those films that requires an active viewer to put the pieces of the puzzle together (the editing is by Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze), but it becomes captivating if you let yourself be carried away by the flow of the narrative without asking too many questions.

Boomerang was produced by German outfit New Matter Films and by Iranian companies Rainy Pictures and Zohal Films. International sales are handled by Cercamon (United Arab Emirates).

(Translated from Italian)

Photogallery 31/08/2024: Venice 2024 - Boomerang

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Shahab Fotouhi, Arash Naimian
© 2024 Isabeau de Gennaro for Cineuropa @iisadege