asheghetam
Directed by Filmsaaz
Production: Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains (France)/Pan Cinema (France)/ l’Abri - Geneva (Switzerland)
Hybrid Short (21 Mins)
In modern-day Tehran, a young protagonist is consumed by the city’s oppressive sorrow, while their partner desperately tries to anchor them to a worldview filled with joy, pleasure, and love. To escape their reality, the couple heads to an underground rave to drown their sorrows. Their night of freedom is violently shattered twice: first by a raid from the morality police, and then by the sudden, terrifying onset of a US and Israeli war on the city.
Told through an out-of-body experience during this single apocalyptic night, Āsheghetam ("I love you") is a live-action, 3D-animated, and found-footage queer-fantasy-slasher-epic. It captures the extreme duality of contemporary Iranian youth, illustrating how a protagonist, pushed to the brink of despair, consciously chooses to live in a beautiful, surreal illusion with their lover in order to survive a harsh and unforgiving world.