Interview with Mansour Forouzesh about A Few Knots Away by Vahid Hosseini-Nami
Interview with Mansour Forouzesh about A Few Knots Away
Source: Iranian Short Film News Agency
April 19, 2019
Vahid Hosseini-Nami:
Mansour Forouzesh is a talented and energetic filmmaker, best known for his film Hose (Shilang) and its multiple appearances at international festivals, as well as for serving as a jury member at a festival in Portugal. For the past two years, he’s been working on his latest film, A Few Knots Away.
I met up with Mansour on a lovely spring afternoon at a cozy café tucked away near Karimkhan to chat about the film.
Where did the initial idea for A Few Knots Away come from? What connected it to or separated it from your previous film, Hose?
The idea for A Few Knots Away came about almost by accident. I had traveled to Hormuz Island at the time, and the atmosphere there captivated me immediately. More interestingly, before the revolution, access to Hormuz Island used to be extremely difficult. While I was there, I met an experimental painter who, as a young man, had escaped the island by swimming.
His energy and the experience of living on the island inspired me to imagine a story within that environment. There are also nearby islands with contested claims over them—claims that inevitably affect the lives of the locals. Places like that exist all over the world—like Kashmir, which has long been disputed between India and Pakistan. That feeling of being caught in between, of existing in the middle of a conflict, gave me the urge to write a story set in that kind of emotional space.
I had already moved on from Hose; it had been finished for some time. With our limited resources, we tried to screen it around the world. But honestly, Hose, with its single location and indoor setting, was never quite satisfying for me. I made it to prove to myself that I could do it.
But for someone like me—who doesn’t like to sit still—making a film in just one location feels like living in a box. I believe film characters should be able to travel, to move freely.
Did the screenplay come from the story or the characters? Was the plot or the character resolution more important to you?
Honestly, neither. Writing and constructing A Few Knots Away was more of a tangible emotional process for me. I was more interested in visualizing the abstract feeling I had about people in situations like those in the film.
As someone who’s naturally inclined toward storytelling, this wasn’t easy. It’s not simple to both tell a story and convey emotion in just 15 minutes. I can’t say how successful I was in terms of narrative, but I can say with certainty that the emotional tone in the film is exactly what I intended.
It’s a feeling of longing, of stubbornness—something our generation understands well.
While writing and shooting the film, I constantly listened to a specific piece of music. I even played it during the shoot. We must have listened to it over a hundred times. Thanks to that music, the entire crew knew exactly what I was feeling and what we were trying to convey. The actors were completely aligned with that emotion, and they gave it their all.
The film leans toward a kind of magical realism, with its shifting, almost dreamlike locations. It reminded me of Hashem’s exhausting effort to drag a body along the shore—stretching endlessly. How much of that world was in the script, and how much came from your visual structure?
I’m an emotional person, constantly thinking about moments that could be created, shaped, and crafted.
You mention magical realism—perhaps because I tried to translate pure emotion into images. As I said earlier, emotion mattered more to me than plot. The script had a somber narrative structure, but I deliberately broke away from realistic storytelling, creating something more abstract and emotionally true.
To achieve that, I decided to let go of the constraints of place. The emotion I was pursuing actually encouraged me to escape geography. When you look at both together—the feeling and the dislocation—you start to understand what the film is doing.
A Few Knots Away doesn’t portray a real world; it depicts a true world—an emotional, abstract one.
The story is about choosing between a better life elsewhere and staying rooted in tradition. How much of that comes from social reality or your personal concerns and those of your generation?
Our generation has always been caught between staying and leaving. And I don’t just mean leaving the country. Different events have forced many of us into this liminal state.
Migration in our time wasn’t just moving from Ahvaz to Tehran or from Mashhad to Bandar Abbas. It was distancing ourselves from places where we simply couldn’t survive.
This feeling hasn’t gone away. Many of our families relocated because of war, economic pressure, work, education—you name it. We constantly saw their longing and emotional attachment to what they left behind.
But there was no choice. It had to happen. I think our generation deeply understands the emotional contradiction—the ache and the attachment—that lies at the heart of A Few Knots Away.
Despite its predominantly masculine world, the film begins with Atiyeh’s voiceover. Her presence, especially at the start, adds a sense of hope and life in the confined world of the island. Is Atiyeh the central narrator? How much of the story is told through her memory of her brother?
Atiyeh plays several vital roles in the film. Some are technical—related to the narrative structure. But the most important role she plays is the one you mentioned.
Atiyeh expresses exactly what the entire atmosphere of the film is trying to say. Nature, the people, the sea, the sky—they all speak through her.
Her feminine, sisterly perspective becomes the soul of the film, giving voice to the waves, the birds, and the landscape itself.
To me, Atiyeh isn’t just part of the film. She is the film.
What kind of cinema are you personally drawn to? Structurally and visually, where would you place A Few Knots Away in relation to your cinematic tastes?
To be honest, I still don’t know what kind of cinema I love most. Not because I’m confused, but because my feelings are always evolving.
What I do know is that I want my films to reflect who I am—to match the emotions that live inside my head.
The way I visualize and express things will probably become clearer over time.
I don’t know what’s next, but I do know that whatever I make, I want it to be its own thing—authentic to itself.
Did this experience bring you closer to the kind of cinema you want to pursue?
Definitely. The challenges we faced while making this film taught me how to make a film that’s truly mine—and still gets made.
A Few Knots Away came straight from within me. Through this project, I learned how to love my films.
I still carry the characters of this film with me—people whose circumstances are misunderstood.
This film pushed me toward a direction that feels more truthful, even though it’s further from commercial cinema.
And I’m happy about that.
I make films because I love to, and because I believe it’s the best way I can express my emotions.
With A Few Knots Away, I’ve done that more effectively than ever before.
Any final thoughts—something you didn’t get to say earlier?
The production conditions were incredibly demanding, largely due to the perfectionism of both myself and Ali Kazemi, our cinematographer.
For a 15-minute film, scouting locations in both the southernmost and northernmost parts of Iran was no easy task.
The contrast between the environments was huge. But the team not only supported my ideas—they contributed their own.
We spent a week in Bandar Anzali, studying three months of weather forecasts to find the right conditions.
Then a week of filming on Hormuz Island, plus two days at a film set, with a crew of around 60 to 70 people involved.
It was no small feat. But by God’s grace and with the help of everyone involved, we pulled it off.
Even now, I feel embarrassed when I think about how cold it was in Anzali—how the actors’ feet froze.
Or how we took a 14-hour train ride from Bandar Abbas to reach Hormuz.
But it all came together.
And every moment of it has become a memory I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.
