North American premiere
A wildly clever and frequently hilarious film in which an actress plays a film director named Narges Shahid Kalhor (whom we often see in conversation with the director Narges Kalhor), and directs her in a film…which we watch. It’s called Shahid. Basically, Kalhor has decided that she no longer wants the “Shahid” part of her name. It is an honorific that reflects religious martyrdom in the family history but Kalhor doesn’t really buy into it. At all. However, changing her name isn’t as easy as it sounds. As if the bureaucratic problems weren’t enough—born in Iran, she lives in Germany—it gets even worse when her long-dead great grandfather, the heroic martyr who bestowed this name on the family, shows up to talk her out of it. And while he’s at it, he and his friends bust some serious dance movies. Simultaneously silly and profound, heady and nutty, Shahid is a deft piece of meta-filmmaking in which everything falls into place. The structure allows for a lot of playfulness, but at its heart the film deals with the heavy issues of legacy and coming to terms with the past. ~SM