Mast-del | tafakory

Mast-del مست دل

World premiere: Cannes Directors' Fortnight

[nominated for the Queer Palm and the Œil d’Or for documentary film]

61st New York Film Festival [NYFF]

48th Toronto Film Festival, TIFF Wavelengths [link]

RIDM, Montréal

MoMA, New York

DMZ Docs

VIFF

Synopsis:

Two women lie together in bed. As the wind bashes against the window, one recalls a past date to the cinema. The narrated scene cannot be conveyed through images. Layers of found and original footage are superimposed to fill in some of the cracks, the deletions, the limits of representation. A love song that would never pass through the censors, Mast-del is about forbidden bodies and desires inside and outside post-revolution Iranian cinema.

Maryam Tafakory returns to GSFF with a new addition to her mesmerising collection of archival interventions on the themes of censorship, desire and sexuality in postrevolution Iranian cinema and beyond. Weaving together negative – sometimes double-exposed – images, subtle sound design and written narrative, Mast-del opens a door to a tactile, intimate experience of the protagonists’ bodily and mental reality. The sound of a wet storm triggers a memory; the screen overspills with obscured close-up shots of two female bodies yearning for one another. While Tafakory’s last film Nazarbazi felt more like a representation of the Aesopian language of (un)expressed attraction, Mast-del takes it a step further – formally embodying the sense of playfulness and craving that are born in the shadow of restrictions. Watching it, I felt like the screen was inviting me to our own play of glances. The film, withholding the clarity of the image, ignited an urge to know, to touch, to see; to fill in the gaps with my imagination. This exploration is not just about sexual desire, it’s about the erotic power. Following Audre Lorde’s words, it’s about a lifeforce – craving to fully feel and share that feeling in all that we are and do. [by Milda Valiulytė]

[2023] 42nd Vancouver Int’l FF [VIFF]

[2023] International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam [IDFA]

[2023] Black Canvas FCC, New Horizon Competition
[2023] DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, DMZ Docs [Korean premiere]

[2023] 50th Film Fest Ghent [Belgian premiere]

[2023] Camden International Film Festival [CIFF]

[2023] 26th Media City Film Festival

[2023] 41st edition of the Festival Tous Courts of Aix-en-Provence (France)

[2023] 42nd Uppsala Short Film Festival [Swedish premiere]

[2023] 38th Mar del Plata International Film Festival [Argentinian premiere]

[2023] 21st Bogotá Short Film Festival [Colombian premiere]

[2023] 43rd Amiens International Film Festival