Iranian mother Pari and her older husband Farrokh, both devout Muslims, travel abroad for the first time. They arrive at Athens airport and are surprised to find that their son, Babak, who is studying in Greece, is not there to meet them. As they cannot find any trace of him, Pari embarks on a desperate search through an alien landscape to find him. Isolated by custom, language and clothing, Pari begins to shed her identity along the way in order to blend in, and gradually finds her own displacement becomes a vehicle for reinvention that may mirror her son’s.

This is the story presented by Iranian-born, Athens-based writer-director Siamak Etemadi in his debut feature, Pari [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Siamak Etemadi
scheda film], set to world-premiere in the Panorama section of the 70^th Berlin International Film Festival. The title character, Pari, who has the same name as the director’s mother, is portrayed by German-Iranian actress Melika Foroutan, best known for the TV Series KDD - Kriminaldauerdienst, while other roles are played by Shahbaz Noshir, Sofia Kokkali, Argyris Pandazaras, Lena Kitsopoulou and Dimitris Xanthopoulos.

Pari was co-produced by Konstantinos Kontovrakis and Giorgos Karnavas, of Greece’s Heretic, Gabrielle Dumon (Le Bureau, France), Frans Van Gester, Arnold Heslenfeld and Laurette Schillings (TopKapi Films, Netherlands), Borislav Chouchkov and Victor Chouchkov Jr (Chouchkov Brothers, Bulgaria), Bord Cadre Films (Switzerland) and Biokon (Greece). The film received support from the Greek Film Centre, ERT SA, France’s CNC, the Netherlands Film Fund, the Netherlands Film Production Incentive, the Bulgarian National Film Center, Creative Europe – MEDIA and Eurimages. The world sales are handled by Heretic Outreach.

Check out our exclusive trailer below: