Mojtaba, Hamzeh, Zar are among other individuals who have been thrown into prison and ideologically interrogated in Iran. In this documentary, the director wants them to interrogate him as agents of the Islamic Republic might. He would like the real torturer in Iran to see himself through the film as if in a mirror. The violent experience of putting themselves in the torturer’s head confronts them with their own limits and the ambivalence of the project itself.
Born in Tehran, Iran, in 1972, he first studied architecture in Paris before turning to filmmaking. He directed his first medium-length documentary, ‘Mothers of Martyrs’, in 2004. In 2010, he made ‘Bassidji’, in which he attempted to dialogue with the defenders of the Iranian regime. He continued this approach with ‘Iranian’ (2014), where he convinced supporters of the regime to stay with him for two days. His lastest films, ‘My Worst Enemy’ and ‘Where God Is Not’, were premiered at the Berlinale in 2023 (the second of which won the Ecumenical Jury Prize at Berlinale Forum), and deal with the violence of interrogation and detention in Iran.