Divine Comedy

absurdity of the regime. After Terrestrial Verses, Ali Asgari took the scene from that film and made it a full feature where the director stumbles across the city hoping to screen the film he has made without any censorship of any kind, while not losing his principles and dignity. The film is grounded in realism, yet uses cinematic form and humour to heighten the absurdity of the world it portrays. It reflects the static, suffocating Iranian bureaucracy in which the artists feel trapped and crushed down. The film tackles several things that are down right stupid in iran with a witty sarcastic humour that works like a charm. Humour arises not from comedy, but from the absurdity of repression and misery. Its the purest form of comedy imo. It uses humour as an endurance to fight the stupidity and show resistance. It talks about artistic expression, freedom and government censorship, and also comments on the film industry as a whole, while questioning self doubts about cinema. The film maintains one of the main features of iranian cinema, where it blurs the lines between fiction and reality. Ali Asgari almost showcased his own personal struggle and experience he had gone through in iran trying to be an honest filmmaker wanting to tell personal stories without any restrictions. I absolutely loved the last few mins of the film, which shows censorship is not just from govt, censorship comes from within and around us, anything which offends anyone, or intolerant towards it ,objects to not show it in the film. And in the end what people ended up watching on the screen just shows the state of cinema in iran.