Shahid

This film is screening as part of FOKUS: Films from Germany, a touring film programme from the Goethe Institut which celebrates the best in German cinema. 

A wildly clever film that’s part reality, part fiction, part theatre and part musical.

Director Narges Shahid Kalhor directs an actor playing a version of herself. She does not want to be called “Shahid” (martyr) anymore and is determined to change her name.

Then, her heroic great-grandfather turns up – given the title of martyr 100 years ago in Iran – from whom his descendants inherited the name. He wants to dissuade his great-granddaughter, and shadows her in her quest along with his dancing friends.

The Bavarian district administration sends her to a psychologist, who also has a difficult name… In the end, everyone is frustrated: the director by bureaucracy, the actor by the director’s demands, her great-grandfather by his descendant’s determination and the film by itself.

The winds of history blow Narges round and round in circles, through the scenic German town and through her own film shoot, as stereotypes and privileges are shaken up performatively and inventively.

Ambiguous autofiction with visual arts, songs and poems: a tragicomic, defiant act of self-empowerment in exile.