Play

Terrestrial Verses

A satirical drama in nine chapters showing the Kafkaesque absurdity of daily life in Iran, and the despairing interactions of ordinary citizens with the government or people in positions of authority.

Please note that this film is in Persian, with Dutch subtitles.
Time & Tickets

A woman is accused of driving a car without a headscarf, a father is criticised for wanting to give his new-born baby a name that is insufficiently Islamic, and a schoolgirl is taken to task for coming to school on the back of a young man’s motorbike. Their stories – sometimes humorous, sometimes gripping – are unfortunately typical of life in Iran, a country with a complex system of cultural, religious and institutional rules that govern daily life.

Directors Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami filmed the nine chapters in a minimalist style, with a static camera focused on the citizens arguing with the authorities. Those authorities are consistently kept off-screen, with which the filmmakers accentuate the invisible nature of the (state) control Iranian citizens face.

Check the English subtitled screenings of this film here.

Ali Asgari & Alireza Khatami, Iran, 2023, 77 min. Persian spoken, Dutch subtitles. With Bahman Ark, Arghavan Shabani, Servin Zabetiyan, Sadaf Asgari, Faezeh Rad..