Screening times:
Friday, July 7, 6:30 PM - Half-capacity screening
Saturday, July 8, 6:30 PM - Half-capacity screening
Mani Haghighi | Iran, France | 2022 | 107m | Persian with English subtitles
with Taraneh Alidoosti, Navid Mohammadzadeh
When Farzaneh (Taraneh Alidoosti) spots a man on a city bus who looks an awful lot like her husband, Jalal (Navid Mohammadzadeh), she follows him to an unfamiliar building. There, she sees the residents greet him as if they know him and watches from the street as he enters an apartment to meet with another woman.
Three months pregnant and barely present in her job as a driving instructor, Farzaneh is convinced she’s caught Jalal in an affair. When they discuss it, he’s adamant about his alibi, reminding her that he was miles away at the time. Farzaneh begins to fall apart, but she swears she saw him, and, unable to let go, she continues to pull on the thread before making an unsettling discovery about the man on the bus.
Mani Haghighi describes his inspiration for this exquisite Iranian noir so: "Living in a theocracy splits you in two. You must become two people to survive. A private life, and a public mask. The split seeps into the narrowest crevices of your life, and your every cell produces a simulacrum of itself: a copy that looks just like you. You produce this copy to protect yourself from the brutality around you, but it can turn against you and destroy you.
I always wanted to make a film about this doubling, and the catastrophes it creates around me. I wanted to make a film about the atmosphere of Tehran: Not the explicitly political film that tackles issues head-on, but a film about the mood of this city, how it feels for us to live here, all of us, together with our doubles..."
"Where 'Subtraction' excels is in its subtext, which manifests in the subtle — and occasionally — brutal contrasts between the two households, particularly when it comes to gender roles and expectations." -Adam Nayman, Toronto Star
"Explores the ideas of multiplicity, climate change, and coping with a life-changing event that can’t be explained- an effectively suspenseful story as doppelgangers try to retain their earlier lives, knowing they’ve changed for all time." -Anne Brodie, What She Said
Tickets $8.75 ($8 cash at the door if available).
Half capacity
Half capacity
