Tamarez, the Sole Representative of Iranian Cinema at Berlin

The film "Tamarez" is this year's representative of Iranian cinema at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival, having had its official premiere on Tuesday. This film, which is part of the Forum section of Berlinale 2017, was previously shown to media representatives, but its first official screening was scheduled for Tuesday. Tamarez is the latest example of the formalistic experiences of the young generation of Iranian cinema. Its 29-year-old director, Abd Abest, has a background in making several short films and acting in the acclaimed film "Fish and Cat" by Shahram Mokri, and has collaborated in theater with figures such as Amir Reza Koohestani and Reza Gooran. Tamarez is his first feature film, and until its announcement for the Berlin Film Festival, few were aware of its production. Its absence from the recent Fajr Film Festival added to the ambiguity surrounding it. Tamarez is more than a typical work of Iranian cinema; it is a formalistic experience in the minimal narrative of a relatively eventful story. Several men in the city of Abadan have been brought to a police station for drinking, fighting, and gunplay. During their narration of what happened that night, the viewer realizes that hidden backgrounds of their relationships and pasts play a crucial role in the unfolding events. An incident that ultimately leads to a horrific disaster in a circular and stormy continuity. The filmmaker narrates this story entirely within a square and theatrical space, eliminating realistic elements. There are no walls, and the mental contracts of the viewer and the film are meant to reconstruct the functions of various concepts. In this structure, placing a simple couch can evoke a home or serve as a simple frame acting as an entrance to the police station or the homes of different individuals. This structure is also accompanied by temporal narrative games to completely distance itself from the narrative of a typical film. Despite such choices, due to the filmmaker's precise execution of his intended structure, the viewer can follow the story's narrative line and largely accept the filmmaker's contracts and execution structure. The narrative set in the city of Abadan emphasizes the impact of war on people's lives and the issue of smuggling, paving the way for tracking political and social changes in the film (even the choice of the dominant green color may evoke a specific meaning for some). Although it is clear that the filmmaker's concern is the success of his formalistic experience, he prefers to focus on the acceptable execution of his structure rather than expressing political and social concepts. Despite the acceptable formation of the film's narrative world, some issues, such as the choice of actors from a specific age group for characters across different age ranges (as a young actor plays an elderly character without specific makeup), have resulted in a lack of ordinary uniformity in the film's experimental forms, even reminding some of student performances. The use of the narrative logic of "butterfly effect," which has been seen in recent years in the works of a range of young Iranian filmmakers, with Shahram Mokri at the forefront, is also present here. In a year when Iranian cinema has a muted presence at the Berlin Festival for various reasons, Tamarez can be more than anything else a representative of the experimental section of this cinema. In years when, due to the success of Asghar Farhadi's films, foreign audiences expect to see a moral and tense drama set against social issues from Iranian films, Tamarez can be a credible representative for the experimental section of Iranian cinema.