THE DEER

  • Masud Kimiai

It is a painful reunion: Shot at and with a bag full of stolen money, Ghodrat flees to his old schoolmate Seyed, who is now severely addicted to heroin and barely knows how to help himself. Even the woman he loves is only with him out of pity. In their hopelessness, the friends slowly find new strength in each other and try to save, if not their lives, then at least their dignity. But there isn't much time, because Ghodrat is being pursued by the police. A showdown is in the offing.

Even under normal circumstances, The Deer would have gone down in Iranian cinema history: On the one hand, Masoud Kimiai's great socio-critical noir drama from the time before the Islamic revolution had a first-class cast with the two stars Behrouz Vossoughi and Faramarz Gharibian. On the other hand, due to its anti-Shah allusions, the film was originally only allowed to be shown in a heavily censored version with a new ending - as on that evening in August 1978, when hundreds of viewers died in an arson attack at the Cinema Rex in Abadan. This is another reason why Kimiai's intense and captivating work is still remembered today. The unconventional Iranian auteur Shahram Mokri has created a bold monument to him in Careless Crime.

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