Filmsaaz

Film

Raha constantly lives in a world of pain where Tehran is nothing but sorrow, but Niayesh, her girlfriend and the love between them, keeps on convincing her of a Tehran which is the complete opposite, a Tehran which is nothing but joy and pleasure. Āsheghetam illustrates the process of how Raha finally lets go of the sorrowful reality out of despair and consciously decides to live in a bubble of joyful illusions in order to survive the harsh reality of living in Tehran today. Through telling a out-of-body story which takes place during one particular night when Raha and Niayesh decide to drown their sorrows at an underground rave party in Tehran, but then their fun is interrupted twice ; once when the morality police breaks into the party, and once again when Israel and US start a war on Tehran.

Āsheghetam (which literally means I love you in Farsi) is a live-action/3D-animation/found-footage queer-fantasy-slasher-epic about the extreme duality that the Iranian youth lives in where they learn to take shelter in illusions in order to survive the harsh reality they live in every day, told through an innocent genre-defying love story.

Filmsaaz

Découvrir le profil

Saleh Kashefi (b. 1999, Tehran), also known as Filmsaaz, is an audiovisual artist in exile working between cinema and music. Through intimate, low-budget works, they explore the juxtaposition of extreme dualities—trauma and healing, toxic masculinity and queerness, hate and compassion—developing a formally radical yet youthful language. A recipient of the Prince Claus Seed Award and an associated artist at l’Abri (residency for emerging artists in Geneva), Filmsaaz has created dozens of audiovisual works presented at international festivals including Cannes, Berlinale, Venice, Locarno, Visions du Réel, Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival and FIDMarseille. Their first feature-length film, the audiovisual opera *WOLFGANG*, premiered at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2026.

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