Doha Film Festival 2025

Divine Comedy

International Feature Film Competition - Doha Film Festival 2025

Ali Asgari / Iran, Italy, France, Germany, Turkey / 2025 / 96 min / Unknown / DCP / In Azerbaijani, English, Farsi / Arabic, English subtitles
Themes: Comedy, Drama
Rated: Mature subject matter. Not suitable for minors. Individuals under the age of 18 are not admitted into cinemas.

Description

Denied, deferred, delayed: the pattern is familiar. Faced with another refusal to screen his latest work, a filmmaker chooses to create the audience that is being withheld from him. With a resourceful producer at his side, he assembles an informal network and moves beneath the radar of ministries and committees. Each step brings him back to the same counters and corridors, yet each encounter, held in steady frames, reveals the texture of a system that keeps people waiting and hopes waning. The cinematic language is deliberately restrained, heightening the absurdity it observes. Bureaucracy becomes a character; the joke is that nothing moves, and yet people do, quietly, cleverly, together.

The cast’s meta presence deepens this exchange between life and cinema: they are not performing resistance so much as continuing it, allowing the camera to hold space for a reality often pushed off-screen. Humour, threaded lightly, functions as ballast, a way to stand upright in a world of shifting rules. The film is less about spectacle than about attention: the courage to look, to gather, to keep faith with the audience that might be scattered at any moment. It is a testament to endurance and to the ordinary audacity of making and showing images when silence would be easier.

Director

Ali Asgari

Ali Asgari is an Iranian writer, director and producer whose films focus on lives at society’s margins. His shorts ‘More Than Two Hours’ (2013) and ‘The Silence’ (2016) were Cannes Short Film Palme d’Or nominees; ‘The Baby’ screened at Venice (2014). Features include ‘Disappearance’ (Venice Orizzonti 2017; TIFF), ‘Until Tomorrow’ (Berlinale 2022) and ‘Terrestrial Verses’ (Cannes 2023). ‘Higher Than Acidic Clouds’ premiered at IDFA 2024. He has served on the Venice Orizzonti jury and is a member of the Academy.

Credits

Screenwriter

Alireza Khatami, Bahram Ark, Bahman Ark, Ali Asgari

Producer

Milad Khosravi, Ali Asgari

Cinematographer

Amin Jafari

Editor

Ehsan Vaseghi

Music

Hossein Mirzagholi

Cast

Bahram Ark Sadaf Asgari Bahman Ark Faezeh Rad Mohammad Soori Milad Ashkali Shahoo Rostami Hossein Soleimani Amirreza Ranjbaran

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