42° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARIES COMPETITION
HIGHER THAN ACIDIC CLOUDS
by Ali Asgari
Country: Iran
Year: 2024
Duration: 70'
After the premiere of his film Terrestrial Verses (co-directed by Alireza Khatami) in Cannes, Ali Asgari was banned from traveling. However, filmmakers like Asgari are not easily deterred from practicing their art, despite relentless repressive interference. In stubborn resistance to his growing pessimism about the way his city is developing, Asgari expresses his dreams and reflections in countless apocalyptic shades of gray. He muses about his mother’s native language, his sisters who could never see his films in the cinema, and Rome, where he lived for ten years. But above all, the filmmaker longs to go outside and fly above the city at a height from which all people are equal. He is left with his memories and imagination, the only things that cannot be confiscated.
Biography
film director
Ali Asgari
(Tehran, Iran, 1982), well known in the Iranian cinema scene, has won over two hundred awards with his works which often focus on people on the margins of Iranian society and on the contradictions of the Islamic regime. His short More Than Two Hours (2013) won Palme d’Or at Cannes, followed by Il silenzio (2016), also presented at Cannes, and then The Baby (2014), also in competition at the Venice Film Festival. His debut feature Disappearance was realized at the Cinéfondation in Cannes and was presented in Venice in 2017. The subsequent The Secret Child had its premiere at the Berlinale in 2022. With Terrestrial Verses he participated at Certain regard in Cannes in 2023. He is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
FILMOGRAFIA
Tonight Is Not a Good Night for Dying (cm, 2011), Barbie (cm, 2012), Bishtar az do saat (More Than Two Hours, cm, 2013), Bacheh (La bambina, cm, 2014), La douleur (cm, 2015), Il silenzio (cm, 2016), In the Same Garden (coregia Sergei Bodrov, Rolf de Heer, Chema García Ibarra, Andrej Landin, Alexandre Rockwell, Gurvinder Singh, Adrian Sitaru, Roger Deutsch, Gábor Holtai, Mark Playne, doc, 2016), Delay (cm, 2018), Pilgrims (cm, 2020), Witness (cm, 2020), Over Mij (About Me, cm, 2022), Ta farda (La bambina segreta, 2022), Ayeh haye zamini (Kafka a Teheran - Terrestrial Verses, coregia Alireza Khatami, 2023), Higher Than Acidic Clouds (doc, 2024).
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, NARRATOR: Ali Asgari. SCREENPLAY: Ali Asgari, Ali Shams. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Arman Fayaz. EDITING: Ehsan Vaseghi. MUSIC: Navid Divan. SOUND: Abdolreza Heydari. PRODUCTION: Ali Asgari, Milad Khosravi per Taat Films, Seven Springs Pictures.
CONTACT: Seven Spring Pictures milad.khosravi.baledi@gmail.com
