Hot Docs 2008

Jamshid Aminfar's paintings are haunting and inspired. With stylized bodies, almost cartoon-like faces and a sharply defined colour palette, his work contains expressive echoes of the works of Edvard Munch and Keith Haring. Using found objects for his canvases, Jamshid paints and displays his portfolio on Tehran's street corners, persisting despite constant haranguing and abuse from the police. Both Jamshid's art and circumstance can be traced to medical complexities as an infant which have left him mentally depressed and introverted. His fear, insecurities and psychological trauma are visually portrayed by the filmmaker using evocative, impressionistic animated sequences, all skillfully intertwined into the film's story. As Jamshid prepares for his first exhibition, he falls in love with a young French woman visiting Iran. His feelings are predictably unrequited, but Cyanosis deftly uses animation to show how his heartbreak can inspire renewed beginnings and new paintings. -Brett Hendrie

In this eye-opening and hopeful portrait of a Tehranian youth correctional centre, filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei introduces us to a small group of teenage boys serving sentences related to violence, theft and drugs. We follow three in particular, each of whom demonstrates an unlikely blend of world-weary toughness, street-smarts and a mature compassion. Their troubled circumstance suggests that they have been surrendered by their families, and the country, to the growing Iranian epidemics of addiction and poverty. In the face of adult abandonment, though, the three discover the simple joys of childhood and friendship through a "boys will be boys" routine of mischief, pranks and sports. In intimate interviews they open up, sharing fierce hopes and tender frustrations for their lives beyond the centre's walls; but Oskouei always delicately pulls back from showing us too much of their families and outside lives. This is a heartbreaking and heartwarming film of generations lost and childhood found. -Brett Hendrie

Murder, social taboos and celebrity combine in Iran's answer to the O.J. Simpson trial. Nasser Khani is an Iranian hero and the country's top sports star: a champion soccer player and coach respected for his talent and strategy. . When his mistress, Shahla Jahed, is arrested and put on trial for the murder of Nasser's wife, his idolized story becomes unraveled. As the Iranian media sensationalize the case, director Mahnaz Afzali goes beyond the tabloid headlines. With remarkable access to both Nasser and Shahla through behind-the-scenes interviews and home-movies, Afzali reveals the curious and cryptic tensions between private lives and public personas. Shahla's courtroom testimony is sassy, tragically eloquent and totally riveting. Her public romantic pleas are a stark contrast to the private Nasser, who is revealed as more of a surly, self-centred slob than his superstar athlete persona should allow. Is Shahla really the murderer? What really happened in this love triangle? The answers provided by the strange, melodramatic courtroom proceedings are inconclusive, a mystery deepened by Nasser and Shahla's vacillating relationship. -Brett Hendrie

In this beautiful and sometimes mischievous homage to the weird and wonderful city of Tehran, the curious contradictions of Iranian history are playfully exposed. Director Massoud Bakhshi constructs a century-spanning postmodern portrait of a metropolis turning megalopolis, increasingly an unsustainable urban mess of pollution, inadequate infrastructure and overcrowding. Using an energetic mix of archival footage, unconventional photography and sometimes asynchronous music and sound, Bakhshi considers the aesthetic and cultural values that have shaped old and new Tehran. His project openly flouts the conventions of documentary essays, and purposefully embraces moments of nonsense and incongruity. The chaotic impulse of the film's construction is a fitting parallel to the development of a city that has haphazardly survived oppressors, wars and internal revolutions. Ironically matching style and subject matter, Bakhshi narrates that it's impossible for him to organize and save his movie from travesty-a critical sentiment he clearly projects onto Tehran, too. -Brett Hendrie

Faced with a nation crumbling down around them, millions of Afghans have been fleeing their home country over the past 30 years. War, brutal regimes and poor quality of life have made it a necessity to move on. Many have sought refuge in Iran, most without official status or sanction in that country. While there, many Afghan men wed Iranian women, often despite deep-rooted cultural frictions. Their compelling stories are elegantly considered by award-winning filmmaker Mahvash Sheikholeslami in Where Do I Belong? As the couples struggle to be accepted, both officially and culturally, their stark interviews expose lives filled with raw and uncompromising decisions about love, country and communal acceptance. Sheikholeslami constructs the film inside a stunning photographic travelogue, filled with dramatic cinematography of rural and urban landscapes. The stories of the mixed Afghani-Iranian marriages often suggest bravery and patience; this is a visually poetic look at enduring, unlikely relationships. -Brett Hendrie