Divine Comedy
Fiction - Feature
Logline:
Through a navigative journey of absurd bureaucracy,
underground deals, and an increasingly surreal reality,
Bahram, an Iranian-Azeri filmmaker, decides to screen
his banned film without official permission. But when
the long-awaited screening finally begins, he never
could have anticipated what happens next.
Director: Ali Asgari
Cast:
- Bahram Ark
- Sadaf Asgari
- Hossein Soleimani
- Mohammad Soori
- Amirreza Ranjbaran
- Faezeh Rad
- Hadi Eftekharzadeh
- Shahoo Rostami
- Milad Ashkali
- Aynaz Naser
SYNOPSIS
Bahram is a 40-year-old filmmaker who’s spent his entire career making films in Turkish-Azeri, none of which have ever been screened in Iran. His latest work, once again denied permission by the Ministry of culture, pushes him to the edge of defiance. With his sharp-tongued, Vespa-riding producer Sadaf by his side, he embarks on an underground mission to showcase his film to an Iranian audience, dodging government censors, absurd bureaucracy, and his own self- doubts.
Executive Producers:
Ali Asgari – Taat Films
Milad Khosravi – Seven Springs Pictures
Co-production:
Kadraj – Hasan Köroğlu
Zoe Films – Lorenzo Cioffi, Giorgio Giampà
Salt for Sugar Films – Avantika Singh Desbouvries
Studio Zentral – Solmaz Azizi and Lasse Scharpen
Raha Raz
Screenplay: Alireza Khatami, Bahram Ark, Bahman Ark, Ali Asgari
Cinematography: Amin Jafari
Music: Hossein Mirzagholi
Costume Designer: Melika Rostami, Melika Gholami
Sound: Abdolreza Heydari
Editing: Ehsan Vaseghi
Set Designer: Melika Gholami
Color Correction: Farbod Jalali
Make-up Artist: Roxana Nikpour
VFX: Tahmineh Askari
First Assistant Director: Mehrnaz Iranmanesh
Executive Producers: Reyhaneh Rad, Şulei Barman
Producer’s Assistant: Vandah Taghdisi
Links and Reviews
Goodfellas has acquired world sales rights for Iranian director Ali Asgari’s satire Divine Comedy, following a filmmaker’s mission to dodge censorship, ahead of its world premiere in Venice’s Orizzonti sidebar… Read More
Cineliterate, meta-textual and wryly sarcastic, the latest film by Ali Asgari is a free-wheeling, sharp-witted satire that unpeels seemingly endless layers of Iranian cultural bureaucracy… Read More
Iranian filmmaker Ali Asgari’s last entry on the festival circuit was Higher Than Acidic Clouds in 2024 – it was a personal documentary that traced his emotional experience of being banned from travelling out of the country by the Iranian government… Read More
After premiering his film Terrestrial Verses in Cannes in 2023, upon returning to Iran director Ali Asgari was banned from travelling abroad for eight months, and many of his belongings were confiscated from his apartment, only to be returned after some weeks… Read More
Like Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident (https://nextbestpicture.com/it-was-just-an-accident/)” or Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig (https://nextbestpicture.com/the-seed-of-the-sacred-fig/),” Asgari’s “Divine Comedy” is fueled by exasperation with a system he’s been battling for years. Casting Sadaf, who was banned from working in Iran after “Terrestrial Verses,” only underlines the film’s defiance… Read More
Ali Asgari with Divine Comedy returns to the Venice Film Festival: a satirical comedy about censored art and the resistance of the gaze… Read More
It is divine in Dante’s and wisely and ironically because it offers a wandering adaptation but with clear ideas, aboard a Vespa, in which the poet, or rather the director Bahram, forty years old, an entire career making films in Turkish-Azerbaijani, none of which have ever been screened in Iran, is accompanied by Sadaf, his producer, a female Virgil with a sharp tongue, in search of a paradisiacal condition that perhaps can be glimpsed… Read More
The fourth film by the Iranian director is a brilliant comedy, confirmation of a talent for knowing how to tell the story of Iranian cinema and society in its stratified complexity… Read More
