Ali Ahmadzadeh secretly shot this enraged film in Teheran and presents the night-time drifting of a drug-dealing taxi driver as a extended tour of the sick. This sets the film on a metaphorical plane, showing a country on its last legs, with no attempt to apologise for the outrageousness of the process. On the contrary, an unvarnished punk dimension colours the succession of hallucinated and often absurd scenes with a certain strangeness and emotion can spring up or attack at almost any moment – often compressed, unleashed haphazardly. Given these filming conditions and the degree of blackness, the vitality of the gestures is surprising: a constant interplay of sound composition, car journeys – the flagship motif of Iranian cinema – that become a hellish drug-fuelled voyage, the amazing performance of Amir Pousti, who explores a critical zone between apathy and empathy. FM
French Premiere
