Story Undone

Similarly to Yektapanah’s first film Djomeh, Story Undone touches on the theme of emigration. But while his first film dealt with an Afghani immigrant in Iran, his second feature focuses on those trying to flee Iran, a common theme in Iranian cinema these days. Two documentary makers, Mazdak (Mazdak Taebi) and Mehdi (Mehdi Baghaian), join a group of people who are fleeing the country to make a film about them. They start filming from the moment the bus heads toward the border. As the emigrants do not want to reveal their identities, they are allowed to wear masks, which makes for quite a strange spectacle. As their tension and fear mounts, the people on the run decide to exclude the film makers from their trip. The film makers don’t give up though, rejoining them in the mountains and following them when they want to cross the border. When the whole group is stopped by the border police, the film makers turn out to be the heroes, by convincing the police that these people are the extras for their film. According to the director, ‘escape’ can be understood here literally as well as metaphorically, as individuals escape from the truth of their own lives. Story Undone is a film about film. It mixes elements of document with those of fiction, moving somewhere on the border between a documentary and a feature. (LC)