No One Knows About Persian Cats

Here is the Iran you don’t see in the news bulletins, or in the stately arthouse movies: it’s the Iran that loves rock, heavy metal and rap. These are the western-style rockers who may turn out to be the unacknowledged legislators for Iran’s pro-democracy movement. Bahman Ghobadi has made a freewheeling, semi-documentary picture about a group of twentysomething Iranian rock musicians desperate to get permission to play a gig in London. It has a weirdly Dick Lester-ish feel to it, but with an undercurrent of desperation. These are people without an obvious political motive — but they are certainly desperate to escape Iran and its stifling atmosphere of censorship. The director himself makes a cameo appearance at the very beginning, and there are some in-jokes targeted at a film festival following. This film may be regarded as a minor work in Ghobadi’s career, yet I get the feeling that it is what is personally most important to him. Watch a trailer (English subtitles)