Pensée Sauvage Films

Ziba

Directed by Bani Khoshnoudi

Fiction feature
Iran / France - 2012

82 min./ Color

Synopsis

Through the character of Ziba, an upper-class housewife in today’s Tehran, we experience the asphyxiation lived on a daily basis by Iranians today. Unable to relate to her environment, Ziba leads an alienated life, caught in the repetitive motions of the everyday and unable to express to those around her what is wrong. One long summer day, Ziba finds herself in an unexpected situation in the company of people unknown to her, confronted with her own choices and indecisions. Not a character portrait per se, this film is a rather visceral metaphor of the general state of oppression and imposed silence in Iran today.

Director's Intentions

Far from being a portrait of Ziba herself, the film tries to put us into her skin, in order to make us feel her interiorized conflict and a general sense of paralysis. Through the other characters, the different locations and situations that come upon us, we find ourselves subtly placed within a metaphor about the general state of oppression or asphyxiation within Iranian society today. This suffocation is political, social, but also personal. It is virtually impossible for communication between genders, across social classes and generations and amongst people with differing cultures within the same society. At the same time, people are victim to their own censorship and containment, mirroring that which the government and its religious restrictions impose on them. My goal with Ziba is to allow the spectator to viscerally live these sensations and the feeling of containment, through the characters, during a compressed and stretched time of the film.

Produced by Pensée Sauvage Films and MSVP with the support of the Cinéfondation Residency, Fonds Sud Cinéma and Fondation Groupama Gan