Director: Salaheddin Noori
Writer: Navid Farrokhi
Cast: Shahryar Rabbani, Pegah Saeedi, Hamid Pishghadam
Running time: 12mins
Film festivals cost a lot of money to run – and when the costs for venues, staffing, website hosting and marketing are squared off, many organisations struggle to break even, let alone make a profit. With submission fees the only source of revenue that many festivals can rely on, that can make granting waivers difficult – resulting in filmmakers who already struggle to have their voices heard being further marginalised.
Stories told by artists from low-income backgrounds, opposition groups hit by censorship, or individuals in nations subjected to international sanctions still need a platform. That’s why Indy Film Library’s Saturday Matinees series has returned for a fifth season.
Over the current run of matinees, IFL will showcase work from places where monetary and legal constraints have prevented the free communication of political and social issues.
The third film in our latest run of Saturday Matinees comes from Iran, and is from a return filmmaker. You may remember Salaheddin Noori from My Partner Giraffe – a bizarre, off-beat comedy about a man trying to curse his business partner to turn into the titular animal. With You Think Although You Are Not, Noori has opted for a change of pace, and collaborated with writer Navid Farrokhi to offer his attempt at Black Mirror-style sci-fi.
To some extent, it pays off. Navid (Shahryar Rabbani) opens the film with something which seems like it should be a third-act reveal. His narration steers us to believe his wife Forough (Pegah Saeedi) died in a car accident, and in his grief he reached out to a nameless tech-organisation to replace her with an android-clone. Rabbani’s performance is the right one for this, filled with lingering, fixated stares, while his decidedly creepy monologue praises the “little details” the robot’s creators have managed to include.
He has boiled his wife down to a product, a consumable which has been designed to behave in a certain pre-determined manner. But a relatively well-delivered twist (yes, in the third act) turns this perception of events on its head – before the film ends in a similar way to its beginning. It is a little like Palindroom meets Ik ben geen robot – conceptually at least.
Where it falls down in comparison with those other two films (particularly Ik ben geen robot), is that Farrokhi’s script is not at all concerned with the ethical conundrum at play. There is no effort to examine the grim objectification at play in the enslaving of an artificial intelligence to non-consensually cosplay as someone’s deceased partner. There is no opportunity presented for either actor to talk about their feelings in this scenario, their desperation or hopelessness at the time they chose to hand over their money to such a ghoulish corporate venture, or their possible guilt and regrets after.
It is hard not to feel like this is a slight step down from My Partner Giraffe, in this case. Certainly, that was a silly concept, but it was decidedly unapologetic about it. The film was not at all interested in appeasing mainstream audiences, and it delivered a project that – while rough around the edges – was something new and enjoyable. It does not feel that way with You Think Although You Are Not, though, because it is trying to play to an audience that already expects certain things. It is trying to emulate a mainstream genre that has already gone further than it is willing or capable to follow – and so even though it is well shot and tightly edited, with decent central performances, it feels less than the sum of its parts.
But that’s just my opinion – and you may well feel differently. As always with Saturday Matinees, the film will be available to view for free in full from 09:00 UK time on Saturday the 20th of July, until the end of the weekend, via our Saturday Matinees theatre page. You can give it your own score out of five there! As the film is still trying to gain access to other festivals, the page is password protected. Use the code IFLMATINEE24 to access the film.