‘Divine Comedy’ review: Ali Asgari skewers Iranian cultural restrictions in witty satire

Dir: Ali Asgari. Iran/Italy/France/Germany/Turkey. 2025. 96mins.

Cineliterate, meta-textual and wryly sarcastic, the most recent movie by Ali Asgari is a free-wheeling, sharp-witted satire that unpeels seemingly limitless layers of Iranian cultural forms. A 40-year-old filmmaker, Bahram (director Bahram Ark, taking part in a fictionalised model of himself) has made a profession crafting uncompromising Turkish-Azeri-language arthouse movies, none of which have been proven in Iran. When his newest movie is refused screening permission but once more, Bahram and his blue-haired producer Sadaf (Sadaf Asgari, additionally taking part in a model of herself) resolve to organise a exhibiting of it in defiance of the censor’s determination. Set in a single day, the image’s droll tone and dry wit skewer the absurdity of the restrictions positioned on life in Iran. Not all of it holds collectively however Asgari’s mild contact and the likeable, naturalistic performances carry the image.  

Has a scrappy, off-the-cuff power and an impish, defiant spirit

Divine Comedy is Asgari’s fifth characteristic, and marks a return to Venice – his debut, Disappearance, premiered on the pageant in 2017. His second movie, Till Tomorrow, launched in Berlin in 2022; his third, the vignette-based satire Terrestrial Verses, co-directed with Alireza Khatami, debuted in Cannes Un Sure Regard in 2023. Competition programmers are historically receptive to movies about filmmaking and this, mixed with Asgari’s worldwide profile, ought to make a wholesome pageant run seemingly for the image. And whereas the sheer quantity of high-quality, boldly political work presently popping out of Iran makes for a crowded market, Divine Comedy’s astringent humour may make it enticing to arthouse distributors or streaming platforms. 

The image’s sardonically amused tone and breezy jazz rating might really feel irreverent, even flippant, however Asgari digs into critical topics: the obstacles to creating artwork and the regime’s heavy-handed interference in all features of life. Its forged listing alone is a political assertion. Sadaf Asgari, the director’s niece and the magnetic star of all however one among Asgari’s characteristic movies has been banned from appearing in Iran after she attended Cannes with Terrestrial Verses. The doorways which might be closed in her character’s face due to her blue hair and refusal to put on a hijab have a symbolic resonance. In actual life, Bahram Ark, alongside along with his twin brother Bahman, who additionally seems within the movie, are filmmakers (they made Soyoogh in 2016 and Pores and skin in 2020) who’ve themselves confronted authorities censorship. 

Right here, the brothers play fictional variations of themselves. Following an early collaboration collectively, Bahram has caught to his weapons, crafting weighty artwork cinema; Bahman nonetheless shows a Godard poster on the wall of his moneyed condo however has bought out creatively, making regime-approved populist comedies with titles like ’Girls Are Wonderful’, and ’The Fox of Valentine 2’. Gallingly for Bahram, his hottest movie is his first, which he directed along with his brother. An exuberant cinema proprietor praises the movie’s “lengthy takes”. Disgruntled, Bahman argues that they used such photographs as a result of they didn’t know something about filmmaking. 

Accordingly, lengthy takes and locked photographs determine prominently in Divine Comedy, however on this case there’s a purpose past inexperience: Asgari makes use of the static compositions to evoke the rigidity of the regime and the oppressive management that it exerts. That is contrasted with the fluid freedom of the sequences during which Bahman and Sadaf zoom round Tehran on her sorbet-pink Vespa (there’s maybe a nod right here to a different loosely autobiographical movie a couple of filmmaker, Nanni Moretti’s Pricey Diary). 

Over the course of the day, Bahram has heated discussions on every thing from The Matrix to Kiarostami. He and Sadaf tiptoe across the ego of a coked-up actor Rouzbeh (Hossein Soleimani) and Bahram is summoned for a gathering with Haranov (Mohammad Soori), a person with an costly go well with, massive guarantees and a viper’s smile, who claims to be “a pal who desires to assist”. Much less profitable is a random avenue encounter with a person who describes himself as a prophet, who provides to launch Bahram from purgatory then steals one among his doughnuts. Elsewhere, a particular point out should go to the movie’s canine supporting actor, who’s credited, solely appropriately, as Shila The Pretty Canine.

In the end, just like the screening that Bahram and Sadaf try to hustle collectively, the image has a scrappy, off-the-cuff power and an impish, defiant spirit. It makes a persuasive case that artwork – and laughter – are potent weapons within the battle in opposition to oppression.