My Worst Enemy

Name: My Worst Enemy
Start: 2024-05-29UTC15:30
Location: Filmoteca Española. Cine Doré. Sala 1

Mehran Tamadon

France, Switzerland

2023

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Synopsis

In 2014, Mehran Tamadon directed Iranian, a documentary for which he invited several supporters of the Iranian regime to his home in order to engage in something the ayatollahs consider intolerable: dialogue and speaking freely. The film provoked the ire of the authorities and led to Tamadon's exile in France. In My Worst Enemy, a film odyssey eight years in the making, the filmmaker imagines what an interrogation by a government agent would be like if he ever decided to return home. Actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi (who memorably starred in Ali Abbasi's Holy Spider and who fled Iran after being sentenced to 10 years in prison and 99 lashes), plays the role of the gendarme questioning Tamadon, and in so doing, reveals the tactics used by the Islamic Republic to silence dissent. My Worst Enemy is a unique example of the speculative power of cinema, and is the other part of an essential diptych along with Where God Is Not, which is also showing as part of this film series. (JHE)

Director biography

Mehran Tamadon

After graduating as an architect in Paris, Mehran Tamadon chose to focus solely on directing documentary films. His first work, Behesht Zahra, Mothers of Martyrs debuted in 2004. His second production Bassidji (2010) was done as an attempt to dialogue with the defenders of the Iranian regime. He continued this approach with Iranian (2014), where he convinced supporters of the regime to live in cohabitation with him. His two new productions, My Worst Enemy and Where God Is Not, both presented at the Berlinale in 2023, deal with the violence of interrogation and detention in Iran.

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