A conference call involving two to five parties. The shadows of the past. Political and class conflict. Unearthed secrets. A deal to be made by any means necessary, including blackmail and deception. All of this is to be found in Homayoun Ghanizadeh’s very unusual, even peculiar, avantgarde film Oh, What Happy Days!, which has just premiered in the Critics’ Picks competition of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

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Actress Hora (Golshifteh Farahani in her first role in an Iranian movie since she went into exile) is being blackmailed by Hashemi (Payman Maadi, from A Separation), who possesses a compromising tape. Hashemi was the son of the head servant at her family’s compound before the 1979 revolution, and now he may or may not be a state agent. In order to avoid public shaming because of the viral video, she must persuade her exiled grandfather (“godfather of Iranian cinema” Ali Nasirian) to make a deal with him on the compound, or otherwise the government will seize it. To achieve this, Hora tries to rely on her aunt (renowned artist Shirin Neshad) and her uncle (Navid Mohammadzadeh), both exiled as well, to help persuade this stubborn old man clinging to decades-old grudges.

Forced into a Zoom call that plays out in real time, Hora comes to know a piece of her family and her country’s history, and becomes aware of political and class conflicts before and after the revolution. She also gets to know the truth about the deaths of her father, who was framed in the turbulent post-revolutionary times, and her uncle, who never reached adulthood, and what the term “happy days” (referring to the times before the revolution) really means to people from different walks of life. The price of happiness for the chosen few was paid by many…

What we see is the same medium-close-up shot from a fixed position mimicking the angle of a laptop camera, either in a single shot or on a screen divided into up to five sections. The composition and placing of the individual shots in the mosaic sometimes suggests a code of sorts, whether it concerns class, age or current degree of power. The “costumes” the characters are wearing are the same – ie, prison uniforms – and the production design consists of the same barren wall, a desk and a chair. Usually, it is all in black and white, but it sometimes gets infused with colour, for an obvious reason or for seemingly no reason at all.

Homayoun Ghanizadeh, who also has a background in theatre, describes his method for Oh, What Happy Days! as “suitcase cinema”, since it was filmed in different locations, from Iran to the USA, via Paris, with the director travelling between the actors. The result is an avantgarde, risky piece of cinema that speaks volumes about the past and the present, displacement, separation from one’s home country and its culture, and even the feeling of being trapped inside it, since in this case it is ruled by a crumbling regime that refuses to give up.

The question here is how long it will take for the main gimmick (which might remind us of the dreaded “COVID-19 cinema”) to wear off, but the answer might surprise us. The story is engaging and is told fluently and naturally, in a way that does not insult the viewer’s intelligence, plus the top-notch acting by these contemporary and erstwhile stars of Iranian cinema channels a plethora of emotions. Oh, What Happy Days! might even open up a completely new avenue in cinema.

Oh, What Happy Days! was staged as a co-production between Iran, France, the USA and Canada through OWHD Productions and Ava Studios.