FICOMENTARY: RECONSTRUCTING REALITY THROUGH NARRATIVE CINEMA

Article / News

FICOMENTARY: RECONSTRUCTING REALITY THROUGH NARRATIVE CINEMA

March 18, 2026

Mansour Forouzesh

PhD candidate at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Doctoral School

MAPPING THE (IN)VISIBLE: IDEAS, EXPERIMENTS
AND SOLUTIONS IN VISUAL ART RESEARCH

Editura Universității de Vest din Timișoara 2025

ISBN 098-630-327-251-1
ISSN 3120 – 0370 ISSN-L 3120 – 0370

ABSTRACT

This essay introduces Ficomentary as a distinct conceptual framework and narrative form within cinema, one that intersects with both fiction and documentary, yet remains clearly distinguishable from other hybrid modes. Ficomentary is rooted in real-life experiences, yet it reshapes and reorders reality to craft emotionally layered and perceptually rich stories. Rather than imitating documentary conventions or fully aligning with fictional cinema, it offers a distinct form that draws from methods like actor-guided storytelling seen in the works of filmmakers such as Abbas Kiarostami. In Ficomentary, real events are not simply documented, instead they are reframed and structured and sometimes reconstructed and combined with fictional events into a fictional narrative that still holds on to its authentic core. This form has urgent relevance in the face of AI-generated cinema, offering a human, improvisational alternative that relies on authenticity, not automation, and formulating story written tools and techniques.

Keywords: Ficomentary, documentary films, constructed realism, narrative indexicality, hybrid cinematic form, lived experience representation, non-professional performance, dramatized authenticity, temporal reordering, cinematic narratology.

Introduction: Defining Ficomentary

Cinema has long operated at the intersection of reality and fiction, but the binary distinction between these categories is increasingly insufficient. A growing body of contemporary cinema illustrates the emergence of hybrid forms that resist simple classification, blurring the boundaries between fiction and documentary. To articulate one such hybrid, I introduce the term Ficomentary: A narrative form in 96 which reality is used as raw material but is shaped into a fictional story through narrative restructuring and juxtaposition with constructed and fictional elements—particularly through the reordering of events. Unlike Mockumentary or Docudrama, which simulate documentary form for narrative or satirical purposes, Ficomentary is defined by a foundational commitment to real settings, people, and life-worlds—yet it does not claim to represent the truth in documentary terms. Rather, it uses fictional techniques, especially dramatic reordering, to shape how audiences perceive that reality. In Ficomentaries, events retain a connection to reality, but their reordering and reframing produce a narrative that no longer mirrors the factual sequence of life. Instead, it constructs a curated, emotionally driven perception shaped by the filmmaker’s storytelling intent. My own research began with a thesis on Abbas Kiarostami’s actor-directing techniques, in which I identified recurring patterns of behavior, improvisation, and narrative construction. He often worked with non-professional actors who were not fully aware that they were being filmed for a fictional narrative. Moreover, they were not directed in traditional terms but were instead guided into emotionally truthful scenarios. These performances felt natural not because they mimicked reality, but because they emerged from it—reality modulated through narrative invention. In Kiarostami’s films, the audience is often unsure of what is “real.” But the illusion is not built on deception; it is built on the restructuring of life into art. This is where Ficomentary begins: at the moment when life is re-performed—not to simulate truth, but to create a more emotionally coherent experience of it, one that the filmmaker has intentionally planned and into which real events are integrated as part of the script or structure. Therefore, in Ficomentary, the central question is not how faithfully the film adheres to reality as a factual documentary might, but rather how reality can be employed in service of the filmmaker’s intention to construct an emotionally resonant narrative.

Narrative Reordering and Constructed Perception

Following Gérard Genette’s theory of story (chronological events) and narrative (the order in which they are presented), Ficomentary asserts that reordering real events creates a fundamentally different story 97 [1]. While documentary aims—or claims—to preserve the chronological (temporal) order and factual conditions of real-life events, adhering to a logic grounded in reality, Ficomentary reshapes those events according to a dramatic narrative logic, prioritizing emotional resonance, catharsis, and storytelling structure over strict temporal or factual accuracy. In other words, whereas documentaries utilize lived experience to affirm the film’s indexical relationship to reality, Ficomentary mobilizes lived experience as a means to enhance the cinematic and narrative articulation of reality through a deliberately constructed fictional framework. In this form, real lived experiences are reconstructed and combined with fictionalized events, and the chronology is deliberately reordered to create a new narrative structure—yet the resulting story retains an essential sense of authenticity in the audience’s perception. Besides combining and reconstructing real events, the reordering of the events creates new causalities, emotional arcs, and even meanings. The audience is not necessarily misled about the events themselves, but their perception of those events is shaped by how the story is structured. This technique echoes a fundamental principle of fiction: that dramatic coherence often supersedes chronological accuracy. In Ficomentary, however, the material partially is drawn from reality, meaning the fiction is not invented but curated. This curation represents an intervention into how reality is experienced and remembered. The mentioned reordering is not merely aesthetic, it is ideological. It reflects the filmmaker’s interpretation of reality, turning facts into emotional truths. The real becomes fictional not because it is false, but because it is rearranged, and this manipulation is what forms a new kind of fiction. As Hayden White suggests, narrative is always a form of construction—even history is shaped by literary principles [2].

Precedents of Realism: Toward the Ficomentary Form

When we speak of shaping or reconstructing reality into a narrative structure in which a fictional story can unfold, an important question arises: what kind of reality are we dealing with? Is it the formal realism of Dogme 95, where authenticity is pursued through strict technical limitations such as natural light, handheld cameras, and on-location sound, to eliminate cinematic artifice and foreground raw, spontaneous 98 performance? Is it the grounded realism of Italian Neorealism, where real locations, non-professional actors, and the socio-political conditions of post-war Italy are not merely background elements, but central to the narrative’s meaning and emotional texture? Or is it closer to Abbas Kiarostami’s approach, where non-professional actors are not simply performing roles, but are emotionally and psychologically invested in re-enacting aspects of their own lives? The answer, within the framework of Ficomentary, is a synthesis of all three. Ficomentary seeks to unify space, performance, and narrative into a single organic structure where every element including space, character, and dramatic arc, serves a larger emotional truth. For example, a Ficomentary character’s inner conflict or the classic tension between “wants” and “needs,” as explored in traditional screenwriting, may directly be influenced by the real-life dilemmas of the person on screen—who is not portraying a fictional persona, but engaging with their own experiences, reframed through a fictional narrative lens.

Ficomentary in Context: Comparative Perspectives

To better understand the unique position of Ficomentary within cinematic discourse, it is essential to compare it with adjacent forms such as documentary, fiction, docudrama, mockumentary, and fictional documentary. These comparisons help to clarify what Ficomentary is—and what it is not—by situating it within a spectrum of narrative strategies that blend reality and fiction to varying degrees. While Ficomentary shares elements with each of these modes, it diverges in intent, structure, and relationship to the real. By outlining these distinctions, we can more precisely articulate Ficomentary as a form that does not merely imitate or merge genres, but redefines the boundaries between them.

Ficomentary vs. Documentary

While both Ficomentary and traditional documentary draw from real-life events and maintain an indexical relationship to reality, their narrative intents diverge. Documentaries aim to present factual, often observational representations of the world, structured around evidence and context. In contrast, Ficomentary reorganizes real events and experiences into a fictional structure, prioritizing emotional coherence 99 over journalistic truth. The goal is not to document reality objectively, but to interpret it subjectively—using fiction to express deeper truths grounded in lived experience.

Ficomentary vs. Fiction: Ficomentary borrows structural and dramatic tools from fiction—such as character arcs, conflict, and reordering of events—yet it is fundamentally grounded in real-life material. Fictional narratives typically involve entirely imagined characters, plots, and settings, with no obligation to factual accuracy. Ficomentary, on the other hand, begins with the real: non-actors, real locations, and genuine events that are then molded into a narrative form. It preserves the unpredictability and texture of reality while using fiction as a frame to shape emotional engagement.

Ficomentary vs. Docudrama: Though both Ficomentary and docudrama are hybrid forms that merge factual content with fictional techniques, their methods differ significantly. Docudramas often employ professional actors to reenact historical events using scripted, dramatized scenes designed for clarity and coherence. Ficomentary avoids strict reenactment; instead, it allows real individuals—often non-actors—to engage with their own lived experiences through guided improvisation. The focus is less on faithfully reconstructing past events and more on capturing emotionally truthful moments that arise organically from the subject’s own reality.

Ficomentary vs. Mockumentary: Mockumentary is a fictional form that parodies the aesthetics and conventions of documentary, usually for comedic or satirical purposes. It often presents fabricated content as if it were real, using interviews, handheld cameras, and pseudo-authentic setups to mimic documentary style. Ficomentary, in contrast, does not seek to deceive or mock—it treats the intersection of fiction and reality with sincerity. The aim is not satire, but the exploration of emotional and psychological depth through a narrative constructed from actual lives and experiences.

Ficomentary vs. Fictional Documentary: The term “fictional documentary” typically refers to films that adopt documentary form to tell an entirely fictional story, often blurring boundaries in order to challenge viewer assumptions about authenticity. While both forms manipulate documentary conventions, Ficomentary is distinct in that 100 it does not fabricate content entirely—it constructs fiction out of real, lived material. Rather than creating an illusion of truth, Ficomentary uses narrative construction to deepen the emotional resonance of real experiences, maintaining a transparent engagement with both form and subjectivity.

Ficomentary at the Intersection of Reality and Narrative

While Ficomentary presents a constructed narrative world, it maintains an authentic connection to reality, however yet the line between fiction and documentary remains deliberately blurred. To better define Ficomentary, we must draw on two foundational aspects of documentary filmmaking: the film’s relationship to the real world, and how both audience perception and filmmaker interpretation shape that relationship. To clarify this, I propose examining two key dimensions of documentary practice—Indexicality and Constructed Reality—as essential components in understanding the conceptual framework of Ficomentary.

Indexicality

Documentary images and sounds are indexical, meaning they maintain an actual, physical connection to the world as recorded, which fosters a sense of authenticity and factuality in documentary filmmaking [3]. Ficomentary partly retains this foundational indexical bond. Although the filmmaker reorders events into a crafted narrative, the raw footage including real people, places, and moments, are partially remain unaltered. This direct link to reality creates underlying credibility: viewers instinctively sense that what they see is anchored in genuine lived experience, even when the arrangement takes on a fictional dimension.

Constructed Reality

Despite their indexical basis, documentaries are constructed—filmmakers shape our understanding of reality through framing, sequencing, editing, and narrative structure [4]. Ficomentary embraces this duality of construction. It does not merely document but reconstructs real‑life events into a fictional narrative. Every decision—what footage to include, how it’s ordered, which emotions are emphasized, even 101 whether a scene is wholly fictional or re‑performed—is an interpretative act. The result is a narrative that, while blending indexical and fictional materials, is consciously shaped to evoke deeper emotional and thematic truths. By mapping Ficomentary onto these two dimensions—Indexicality and Constructed Reality—we can visualize how it inhabits the space between documentary authenticity and fictional narrative design.

Ficomentary and the Fourth Wall

While documentaries often acknowledge the camera’s presence and fictional films traditionally maintain the „fourth wall,” Ficomentary inhabits an in-between space. It presents life as if it is fiction, often with no acknowledgment of the camera, yet what unfolds is partly unscripted, improvised, or drawn directly from lived experience. This paradoxical relationship between performance and authenticity is a key mechanism of audience engagement. Viewers are drawn in not by the spectacle, but by the tension between reality and the crafted experience.

Improvisation and the Human Element

Improvisation plays a central role in the Ficomentary form. It allows for authentic emotional reactions within an imagined narrative structure, thus preserving the unpredictability of reality while serving the demands of story. In this way, Ficomentary builds on what Patricia Pisters describes as neuro-image cinema, where emotional coherence trumps linear causality [5]. This approach is especially relevant in an era where AI increasingly dominates image production. While AI can simulate structure, it struggles with the improvisational, spontaneous nature of lived experience. Ficomentary emerges as a counter-model, an assertion of cinema’s human, unrepeatable, and emotionally organic nature.

Toward a Cinema of the 21st Century

The future of cinema is in flux. With artificial intelligence threatening to overtake many elements of industrial filmmaking, the value of human unpredictability becomes more central. In this context, Ficomentary offers an essential alternative: a form of storytelling that 102 cannot be generated, predicted, or repeated by algorithms. It is rooted in real-life complexity, emotional nuance, and narrative ambiguity aspects of storytelling that resist systematization. Rather than opposing documentary or fiction, Ficomentary exists alongside them, offering a third path. It invites us to imagine a cinema where stories are not built from scratch but sculpted from reality, where structure is invented, and material is found or have been reconstructed based on their organic connection to the reality, and where the aim is not objective truth, but subjective resonance.

Personal Engagement within the Ficomentary Framework

My curiosity and ongoing research into establishing Ficomentary as a distinct narrative form which can be separate from both fiction and documentary, has not only shaped my theoretical work but also deeply influenced my filmmaking process. In order to examine this conceptual framework in practice, I decided to test and explore it through my latest film project: a 23-minute short titled The Elephant’s Tango.

Fig. 1. Mansour Forouzesh, The Elephant’s Tango, personal collection.

This Ficomentary centers on a performance artist who is reluctant to share his work with his 10-year-old daughter, because he believed the performance setting and costume seemed inappropriate for a child, and he felt uncertain about exposing her to it. The film, spoken in Mongolian, was constructed around the real emotional conflict of the main character, who portrays himself alongside his actual daughter. 103 The story emerged from his inner struggle, and the result was striking. Although I do not speak Mongolian myself, the emotional authenticity of the relationship and the characters’ connection to the narrative made communication and direction remarkably fluid throughout the production. Over the course of several months, I observed the father-daughter relationship closely to identify moments that could be shaped into a narrative.

Fig. 2. Mansour Forouzesh, The Elephant’s Tango, personal collection.

One key scene features the daughter watching her father perform in costume for the first time. While this moment was scripted, it also unfolded authentically during filming; it was, in reality, her first time seeing her father in that role and costume, which he had intentionally kept from her. This scene not only reflects the narrative goals of the film but also captures an emotionally truthful moment that embodies the essence of Ficomentary: a real-life experience reframed through a fictional lens to convey deeper emotional resonance.

Conclusion

Ficomentary challenges us to reconsider our understanding of narrative, reality, and fiction in cinema. By reordering real events and constructing fictional elements with a root in reality, filmmakers can create stories that are emotionally truthful yet factually reorganized, 104 fictional in form but real in substance. The result is a compelling cinematic experience that acknowledges the constructed nature of all storytelling while preserving its connection to lived experience. As we move further into an era of synthetic image-making, Ficomentary may offer a vital model for the continuation of human-centered cinema, where audience engagement is not driven by emotional manipulation produced through formulaic storytelling, but by a more sympathetic and authentic emotional connection.

Endnotes

[1] Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980.

[2] White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

[3] Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010, p. 106.

[4] Renov, Michael. Theorizing Documentary. London: Routledge, 1993, p.21-22.

[5] Pisters, Patricia. The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012, p.

Bibliography

D’Ancona, Matthew. Post-Truth: The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back. London: Ebury Press, 2017.
Denson, Shane, and Julia Leyda, eds. Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2016.
Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980.
Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary. 2nd ed. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.
Pisters, Patricia. The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012.
Renov, Michael. Theorizing Documentary. London: Routledge, 1993.
White, Hayden. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987.

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. Mansour Forouzesh, The Elephant’s Tango, personal collection

Fig. 2. Mansour Forouzesh, The Elephant’s Tango, personal collection

This article was published on SIMPOZION. Mapping the (In)visible: Ideas, Experiments and Solutions in Visual Art Research
Proceedings of the International Conference of PhD Students in the Field of Visual Arts
Organizer: I.O.S.U.D. West University of Timișoara,
Doctoral School of Arts, Faculty of Arts and Design
Project and volume coordinator:
Professor habil. PhD Adriana Lucaciu
Moderators of the communication session:
Research Assistant PhD Oana-Maria Popescu, Teaching Assistant PhD
Bogdan-Ștefan Matei
Editor and preface:
Professor habil. PhD Adriana Lucaciu
Coeditors: Research Assistant PhD Oana-Maria Popescu, Research Assistant PhD
Gabriela Robeci, PhD Candidate Iulia Părăușanu
Graphic design: Teaching Assistant PhD Bogdan Ștefan Matei
Typesetting and layout: Valentin Sora-Nijloveanu
ISBN 098-630-327-251-1
ISSN 3120 – 0370 ISSN-L 3120 – 0370

Article / News / Photography / Reviews

Independent Middle-Class Art and the Question of Representing Lived Reality in Personal Narratives

January 29, 2026

THE ORDINAЯY MOMENT

A report on the exhibition “The ORDINAЯY MOMENT” at the Budapest Photo Festival 2025

Introduction

The ORDINAЯY MOMENT is a group exhibition presenting works by Iranian photographers at the Budapest Photo Festival 2025. Curated by Mansour Forouzesh, the exhibition centers on storytelling as a fundamental mode through which photographers engage with and narrate the world. Rather than foregrounding stylistic unity or thematic consistency, the exhibition proposes a relational approach, emphasizing the lived photographic practices of its participants and their sustained engagement with everyday reality.

The exhibition deliberately focuses on photographers whose work remains largely absent from dominant institutional, market-driven, and festival-oriented circuits. These are practitioners whose artistic production is neither marginal in quality nor derivative in form, but structurally peripheral within contemporary systems of cultural validation. In this sense, The ORDINAЯY MOMENT can be situated within a broader inquiry into what may be described as independent middle-class art: cultural practices produced outside elite institutional frameworks, yet marked by conceptual rigor, narrative depth, and sustained personal commitment.

Rather than articulating a single thematic proposition, the exhibition constructs a composite narrative of everyday life in Iran. This narrative emerges not through representational consensus, but through the coexistence of distinct artistic positions—each shaped by the photographer’s social location, lived experience, and relationship to the act of image-making itself. The exhibition thus unfolds as a multi-layered dialogue between individual modes of seeing and broader questions of representation, visibility, and meaning.

This report examines The ORDINAЯY MOMENT through conversations with the curator and participating photographers, situating the exhibition within contemporary debates on narrative, institutional visibility, and independent artistic production.

Following the First Spark: Paths Outside Institutional Formation

A defining characteristic of the photographers presented in The ORDINAЯY MOMENT is the absence of a linear or predetermined trajectory into professional art practice. Like many photographers working outside institutional centers, their engagement with photography often began as a contingent encounter—a spark ignited at a particular moment, rather than the outcome of formal artistic training.

Photography initially functioned as a means of orientation: a way of making sense of the world when language proved insufficient. Over time, this spark was sustained through diverse tools and formats, ranging from mobile phone cameras to analog and digital systems. The heterogeneity of image-making devices visible in the exhibition reflects not technological eclecticism, but a continuity of attention across changing material conditions.

Universities, social media platforms, theatrical environments, and journalistic contexts served as formative spaces in which photographic practice gradually took shape. These were often non-art institutions—sites where visual expression emerged as a response to structural absence rather than institutional encouragement.

Curator Mansour Forouzesh recalls his own experience studying at a non-art university, where a film and photography club provided an entry point into artistic practice:

“My relationship with art was shaped primarily by personal passion and curiosity. Studying outside an art academy created a space where experimentation was possible without predefined expectations. Later, within academic art institutions, I became aware of how formal structures—while useful—can also limit personal and subversive experiences. This awareness continues to inform my curatorial and artistic work.”

Similar trajectories characterize other participants. Nikoo Alidoosti traces her engagement with photography to following a friend’s work on Facebook while studying law. Fatemeh Salehi’s background in urban planning informs her sustained attention to the city as a lived environment, while Morteza Beiglou emphasizes the formative influence of vocational art schools and darkroom spaces.

These discontinuities between formal education and artistic practice are not incidental. They reveal a structural condition shared by many independent practitioners: photography is maintained alongside other professions, functioning less as a career than as a sustained mode of engagement with lived reality.

Independent Middle-Class Art: A Structural Definition

To describe this condition, Forouzesh employs the term middle-class art. In this context, the term does not denote an average aesthetic or moderate artistic ambition. Rather, it refers to a structural position within the cultural field.

Independent middle-class art designates practices produced by artists who possess cultural capital—visual literacy, conceptual awareness, and historical sensitivity—without corresponding access to institutional power, economic resources, or symbolic legitimacy. These artists operate outside elite academic frameworks and global art markets, while also lacking the infrastructural support necessary for sustained visibility.

This position is defined by in-betweenness. Middle-class independent artists are neither fully integrated into dominant institutions nor positioned in radical opposition to them. Their marginality is not an aesthetic strategy, but the result of misalignment with prevailing systems of recognition, which tend to favor either institutionally credentialed practices or visually legible, market-oriented narratives.

Importantly, the middle-class condition remains analytically relevant because it shapes both the material conditions of production and the temporal rhythms of artistic work. These practices are often self-funded, developed over long durations, and sustained without guarantees of exhibition or circulation. Such conditions encourage attention to process, narrative accumulation, and personal experience rather than immediate visibility or performative impact.

Within this framework, the curatorial approach of The Ordinary Moment consciously resists the category of the exotic. The notion of exoticism, long embedded in the Western reception of art from non-Western regions, presupposes a hierarchical gaze in which difference is aestheticized, simplified, and rendered consumable. By framing cultural otherness as spectacle, the exotic reduces complex social realities to visual markers of strangeness or cultural distance.

This curatorial project instead insists on proximity rather than distance. By foregrounding ordinary moments, personal narratives, and everyday temporalities, the exhibition rejects representational strategies that rely on cultural unfamiliarity or symbolic excess. In doing so, it positions the works not as illustrations of an “elsewhere,” but as autonomous artistic practices embedded in lived experience. Avoiding the exotic thus becomes an ethical and epistemological choice—one that seeks to suspend the unequal power relations often implicit in cross-cultural display and to allow the works to be encountered on their own narrative and formal terms.

The Camera as a Narrative Instrument

For the photographers in The ORDINAЯY MOMENT, photography functions less as a medium of representation than as a narrative instrument—a means of articulating personal relationships to time, place, and experience.

As Shervin Shirkubi notes: “Sometimes I complain through photography, sometimes I protest, and sometimes I try to fix my own era in time. I rely on storytelling rather than manifestos.”

This emphasis on narrative aligns with Forouzesh’s broader research project, The [IN]VISIBLE Meaning, which examines the relationship between storytelling and meaning in photographic practice. Central to this inquiry is the question of whether photographic meaning resides solely in what is visible, or whether it is shaped equally by what remains unseen—including the photographer’s subjective position.

Within this framework, the act of selection becomes crucial. By isolating a single moment from countless possibilities, the photographer actively constructs narrative significance. The subject itself becomes secondary to the decision to record a particular fragment of lived reality.

Across the exhibition, photography is articulated as an inward process: a form of reflection, catharsis, or self-positioning. For Morteza Beiglou, it is a practice of patience; for Mahnaz Minavand, a means of approaching the self; for Fatemeh Salehi, a reciprocal dialogue with the world; and for Nikoo Alidoosti, a temporal suspension within an otherwise numbing reality.

Structural Constraints and the Politics of Visibility in Iranian Photography

The relative invisibility of these practices cannot be separated from the structural conditions of photography in Iran. Security restrictions, the high cost of equipment, and widespread public distrust toward cameras impose significant limitations on photographic work in public spaces.

Several photographers describe these constraints directly. Saeedeh Mirzadeh observes that many individuals actively avoid being photographed, while Mahnaz Minavand identifies the difficulty of street photography as a major obstacle to sustained practice. Nikoo Alidoosti notes that public resistance often interrupts the moment of documentation itself, resulting in the loss of what she describes as the “documentary moment.”

Beyond these material constraints, the photographers articulate broader critiques of Iranian photography’s relationship to international festivals and exhibition circuits. Shirkubi characterizes the field as entangled in imitation and repetition, arguing that it has yet to establish a fully autonomous visual language. Minavand points to the discouraging role of personal connections in gaining access to galleries, while Alidoosti critiques the prevalence of slogan-driven imagery that simplifies the complexities of contemporary Iranian life.

Within this context, independent middle-class practices occupy a particularly precarious position. International platforms often privilege images that conform to recognizable narratives of crisis, resistance, or cultural difference. Practices grounded in everyday experience, ambiguity, and personal narrative risk exclusion precisely because they resist such translation.

The Works Presented

The individual projects presented in The ORDINAЯY MOMENT reflect these concerns while maintaining distinct conceptual positions. Nikoo Alidoosti’s The Fifth Wall engages critically with mediated empathy, drawing on Susan Sontag’s reflections on spectatorship and suffering. The series questions the assumption that distant observation constitutes ethical engagement, proposing the concept of a “fifth wall” produced by contemporary visual media.

Mahnaz Minavand’s Faceless emerges directly from lived experience, emphasizing anonymity and erasure as structural conditions rather than symbolic gestures. Shervin Shirkubi’s Streets, initiated in 2013, documents Iranian hip-hop culture through a long-term, uncensored engagement that resists both nostalgia and spectacle. Morteza Beiglou recounts the making of a single image: “I stood on the hot sand for an hour so this child could conquer the dune. Each time his feet burned, he knelt down. This patience exists in all my photographs.”

Such accounts foreground duration, presence, and commitment—qualities that align with the broader ethos of independent middle-class practice.

Photography in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The expansion of AI-based image-making tools prompted reflection among the photographers on the future of photography. While acknowledging AI as a potential technical resource, participants consistently emphasized the irreplaceability of embodied experience.

Fatemeh Salehi likens AI to the early reception of photography itself: initially unfamiliar, but ultimately integrated into visual culture. Shervin Shirkubi, despite experimenting with AI, argues that the absence of sensory presence limits its capacity to convey human experience.

Forouzesh similarly emphasizes that the value of projects such as The ORDINAЯY MOMENT lies precisely in their grounding in lived reality—an element that remains resistant to automation.

Conclusion

The ORDINAЯY MOMENT articulates a curatorial position that foregrounds independent middle-class art as a vital yet underrepresented mode of cultural production. By focusing on photographers whose practices unfold outside dominant institutional and market frameworks, the exhibition challenges prevailing regimes of visibility and representation.

Rather than offering a unified thematic statement, the exhibition constructs a narrative of everyday life through accumulated personal perspectives. In doing so, it affirms the significance of artistic practices that privilege narrative integrity over recognizability, duration over immediacy, and lived experience over symbolic performance.

Projects such as The ORDINAЯY MOMENT suggest the possibility of alternative cultural structures—self-organized, sustainable, and attentive to the complexities of everyday life. They invite renewed attention to artistic practices that remain unseen not because of their insignificance, but because of their refusal to conform to standardized modes of representation.

News / Photography

Ordinaяy Moment – Iranian Photo Exhibition in Budapest

May 13, 2025

“Ordinaяy Moment”: Iranian Photographers Capture Everyday Life at FUGA as Part of Budapest Photo Festival 2025

Budapest, Hungary – April 10, 2025 — The photo exhibition Ordinaяy Moment opened its doors at FUGA: Budapest Center of Architecture, offering visitors a rare and compelling look into the nuances of everyday life in Iran through the eyes of 18 emerging Iranian photographers. Curated by Iranian visual artist, Filmmaker, and researcher Mansour Forouzesh, the exhibition is a central feature of the Budapest Photo Festival 2025 and is proudly supported by the Hungarian University of Fine Arts (MKE).

Originally scheduled to run until May 5, the exhibition has now been extended until May 14 due to high public interest. It is open to visitors Wednesday through Sunday, from 14:00 to 19:00 at FUGA, located in downtown Budapest.

Ordinaяy Moment is the culmination of over two years of research and curatorial work, grounded in Forouzesh’s broader research project titled [IN]VISIBLE MEANING, which investigates the role of narrative in fine arts. The exhibition brings together a diverse selection of visual narratives that explore the poetic, political, and personal dimensions of daily life in contemporary Iran. It challenges clichés and offers a multifaceted, deeply human perspective on a society often oversimplified in mainstream discourse.

Related article on Iran Daily: https://newspaper.irandaily.ir/7805/8/14736

Reflecting the rich social, cultural, and climatic diversity of Iran, the featured photographs capture fleeting and intimate scenes—quiet gestures, urban stillness, rural rituals, and domestic atmospheres—imbued with subtle emotion and storytelling.

“This exhibition is not about grand spectacles; it’s about small, shared truths,” Forouzesh said. “These images speak to a collective memory shaped by the ordinary, which often carries the deepest meanings.”

The participating photographers are:
Amir Masoud Arabshahi, Arash Tawakoli, Bita Kahnamoui, Fatemeh Salehi, Golnaz Zibandekhoo, Hojatolah Ataie, Majid Halvaei, Mahnaz Minavand, Morteza Beiglou, Meysam Pourjafari, Mohsen Tavangar, Nikoo Alidoosti, Parham Raoufi, Reyhaneh Malek Shoar, Samira Saramad, Sajedeh Erfani, Shervin Shirkoubi, and Saeedeh Mirzadeh.

The exhibition is also accompanied by a review from art critic Réka Kovács, offering critical insight into the cultural and aesthetic significance of the project. The full English review can be read at: rekkova.hu/en/showing-iran-bpf-2025

News / Photography / Reviews

Finding Order in Chaos: Photography, Perception, and the Art of [IN]visible Meaning

May 30, 2024

By Mona Monsefi

Mansour Forouzesh, in his exhibition, [IN]visible Meaning, depicts two collections, Fear and Comfort Zone, both ultimately presenting his philosophical approach to the definition of meaning. Fear expresses his experience of the strain on people through social media during the Covid-19 pandemic and Comfort Zone, an ongoing black-and-white project started in 2017, illustrating a critical view of city escapes. Both collections challenge the audience to observe and redefine the meanings [IN] patterns that are visible to them.

Observer, a photograph from Comfort Zone, is the most suitable photo to describe the artist’s mindset, revealing what to expect in this collection. Observer portrays floating cameras behind glass, merged with a reflection of a human figure and a building in the background. This photograph is independent of time and space. In this work, deciding who the observer is could be challenging, whether it is the human, camera, photographer, or combination. The three main elements of Observer are the recurrent themes, which are the viewer, the organic beings, and the heavy space wrapping around them. The artist presents the fast-moving time and ever-changing aspects of space in an urban environment. Each snapshot offers an effectively established composition and wrestles to freeze a moment to extract meaning. Comfort Zone constructs order in chaos and foregrounds fragile beings, naming humans and birds. Comfort Zone is an elegant union of many forms of contrasts. Forouzesh, in this collection, puts organic and delicate features in contrast with large buildings in urban spaces, creating tension between the two. These two forces push each other’s boundaries to rule the space. Sometimes, the organic elements create their own comfort zones within the concretes, as seen in the photo Surrounded, illustrating travelers in a nest-like space made of heavy architectural structures. Sometimes they are overpowered by the space and turned to concrete, as seen in the photo Prisoner, which shows a statue of a man looking up as if he is sinking. There are also moments of harmony between the organics and the urban space, as seen in Recall, showing an umbrella protruding from the concrete blocks in a Holocaust memorial and Home, illustrating a massive apartment building. In the last two examples, organics blend with metals and concretes to form comfort zones.

The photographs’ relatively minimal compositions and high contrast black and white nature eliminate the distracting elements, urging the viewers to redefine their understanding of their surroundings. The persistence in creating compositions made of solid, angular, and linear structures works well to show the swiftness of urban lifestyle in the absence of the typical elements for this purpose, such as the presence of a crowd or manipulation of the shutter speed. The various points of view also play a role in this collection. One would naturally experience these angles by walking in the city. In addition, being black and white, creates a sense of documentation, which incidentally is the artists’ primary expertise. On the other hand, the Fear collection has a fixed point of view that creates a feeling of a need for control in the viewer.

Fear illustrates a series of photographs of everyday objects being frantically sanitized to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus in the hope of preventing contraction during lockdowns. During this time, the meanings of the ordinary phenomenon became highly individualized and politicized based on one’s personal life. Excerpts from social media accompany the artworks, warning and informing their audiences. Whether accurate or not, the news immediately affected the population and caused fear. The colored pictures of Fear resemble the images from social media, consistent with news Excerpts.

This series also has documentation and narrative quality, but it is staged. This collection, too, similar to Comfort Zone, plays with the idea of anchoring down and making sense of the surroundings by finding solace in chaos. It exhibits extremes by contrasting different textures in the images. The contrasts are both in the visual elements and also the meanings. Among the visual contrasts, the images of soft foams against the hard packaging of coffee, rice or broken eggs are noticeable. On the other hand, contrasted textures in this series can intensify the meaning as well, such as the instability of foams against a wristwatch that could convey a sense of a waste of time.

Another thing that connects these two collections is the absence of a tailored meaning that would typically put one’s mind at ease. This absence plays into one’s frustrations.

Both collections present a sense of inner dialogue and solitude as an observing outsider in a crowd. The creator of the works, similar to the viewers, is overwhelmed by the environment. They could seek refuge in the comfortable definitions or the notion that the meanings that we are used to are no longer adequate.

News / Photography / Reviews

“[In]Visible Meaning”: Pandemic, Cities, and Human Emotion

May 30, 2024

By Paula Grohn

Mansour Forouzesh’s photo exhibition “[In]Visible meaning” consists of two series of photos called “Fear” and “Comfort Zone”. The Fear series is a collection of colour photos, taken during the first months of COVID-19 spreading, each photo being presented together with a news article headline related to Coronavirus pandemic. The series is reintroducing us the early days of the pandemic, when no one yet knew what will happen and how long would it take for it to pass. Suddenly, our daily lives were filled with non-stop news coverage of Covid and questions, some more profound while some being very practical, such as if our groceries need to be disinfected, what kind of products we should store at home, if masks can be reused and if we should wash the feet of our pets the same way we are washing our hands when entering home. Although life has returned almost back to normal since then, the photo series is still current, giving us a possibility to reflect how in proportion our fears and behaviour related to it were compared to what we now know about Covid. The soap can be seen as us trying to gain back the feeling of control and reducing the amount of fear by washing everything, while the photos also manage to captivate a more serious question which was often asked during the pandemic; what and who can we trust and rely on.
The Comfort Zone photo series is rooting us back into the present moment. The series include mostly black and white photos of everyday life moments and human-built structures creating spaces in an urban environment. In this series the photographer is exploring the relationship between urban cities and the citizens. The photos are dynamic and simplistic, using the power of geometric shapes, repeating rhythmical elements and strong contrasts. Some of the photos are exhibited in pairs, creating a visual dialog between two images. At first glance the photos might remind us of social issues in large cities, but also different explanations can be given. While one viewer sees a huge apartment building with thousands of inhabitants as a dangerous and suppressing environment to live in, another one feels nostalgic because she lived a happy childhood in a similar place, and while someone might consider a person sitting by himself at the train platform as lonely, another one might congratulate him for being able to take a moment for himself. It would be simple to explain the differences in interpretations with different perspectives. What we could ask ourselves instead is, what do we find resonating in the photos and what it can teach us about ourselves. After all, these could be core questions to reveal invisible meanings.

Article / Film Reviews / Reviews / Reviews

A Few Knots Away: An Emotional and Abstract World | by Vahid Nami

June 30, 2023

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.

Article / Film Reviews / News / Reviews / Reviews

Review | The Tragedy of Living in a Limbo

August 10, 2022

By Seyed Reza Saeemi – Film Critic

A Look at the Documentary Lost Whispers in the Distance
[This article was published on the Iranian IRAN newspaper 10th August 2022] Link to the article: Full article in Persian

Lost Whispers in the Distance may have a poetic title for a social documentary, but traces of tragedy are evident in it—revealing the film’s perspective on the subject of migration. Migration, which today is transitioning from being an exception to a widespread phenomenon, inevitably brings with it a broader range of consequences. Clearly, “migration” is not inherently a negative term or action—in fact, even religious sources sometimes emphasize its necessity and positive functions. However, this documentary focuses on a type of migration rooted in unrealistic and ill-considered dreams, which, contrary to the migrants’ hopes, turns from a liberating experience into one of captivity.

Although economic hardship and livelihood crises are the primary drivers behind the rising desire to migrate in our country, equally significant are the misinformation and fantastical dreams about life beyond the borders. These illusions lead migrants into naïve expectations that often result in hardship and peril—as shown in the documentary, where they are left stranded with no place to belong. The destination becomes not a better life but a state of confusion and disillusionment.

Lost Whispers in the Distance approaches the subject not abstractly but with a concrete, grounded focus on people who now live in the limbo of migration. They have fled their homelands without reaching their destination, suspended in uncertainty on the soil of a transitional country, enduring harsh and unstable living conditions. “Jafar” and “Mozaffar” are the main characters through whom we come to know the precarious and unsettled lives of migrants in Šid, Serbia—people who arrived through illegal immigration and human traffickers and now face an uncertain future.

The film opens with a city road sign on a winter highway and ends with a frame of displaced migrants trekking through snowy paths toward Europe. These two snowy, wintry scenes are symbolic indicators of the bleak, cold reality these migrants face—experiencing lives marked by hardship and ambiguity. In the closing credits, we learn that not only did these migrants fail to reach their destination, but some were also arrested by Croatian police and transferred to a refugee camp in Šid, Serbia—a bitter and uncertain fate intertwined with homelessness and displacement.

The documentary presents stark and disturbing images of these migrants’ lives—many of whom are from Afghanistan—living in half-constructed buildings with minimal facilities. If we think of migration as having three parts—origin country, the journey, and destination—the film focuses on the middle ground of this process: the transitional journey and the temporary halts along the way. It captures the tragic limbo in which migrants find themselves. It’s as if the camera, too, is one of the migrants—caught in this uncertain, disoriented state and reflecting it through the film’s mise-en-scène.

In essence, the film portrays the lives of a group of Iranian and Afghan asylum seekers in a small Serbian town, all hoping to cross into Europe for a better life. These refugees speak about the future they imagine for themselves. The filmmaker deliberately maintains emotional and narrative distance from the subjects, avoiding the imposition of personal judgment—allowing the images and interviews to speak for themselves and present the truth.

In this sense, the film becomes a visual report on the legal and illegal refugee camps in Serbia, documenting these conditions as a kind of cinematic evidence, conveying the logic and reality of the documentary form. The film’s narrative style and camera perspective ultimately produce a visually painful atmosphere, evoking the sorrow of exile—a feeling the audience can deeply experience through the scenes.

Perhaps the most important feature of Lost Whispers in the Distance is its refusal to judge or take a clear position toward its subjects. Instead, it adopts a reportage tone, allowing the gap between the dream of migration and the reality of it to emerge organically through the images and interviews—without the use of narration. This artistic strategy enhances the film’s credibility and documentary logic.

Ultimately, Lost Whispers in the Distance uses an observational approach to speak about the suffering and misunderstandings surrounding migration. It persuades through truthfulness, not exaggeration.

Article / Film Reviews / News / Reviews

Review | The Story of the Storm and the Mismatched Children

August 10, 2022

A Look at the Film Lost Whispers in the Distance
By Alireza Naraqi – Journalist (instagram: @alirezanaraghi )

[This article was published on the Iranian Hamshahri newspaper 10th August 2022] Link to the article: Full article in Persian

Lost Whispers in the Distance, directed by Mansour Forouzhesh, is a documentary that makes its stance clear to the viewer from the very first shot. The subject of the film is so significant that we are immediately immersed in its world through its opening visuals and intertitles. In recent years, illegal immigration and asylum-seeking have been among the major global challenges, encompassing political tensions within the international order, wealth distribution issues, and local, economic, political, and environmental conflicts.

Migration has always been one of humanity’s age-old options for changing conditions and striving for a better, more suitable life. Escaping one land to start anew elsewhere—regardless of the motive or necessity—has recurred throughout human history so often, and influenced our biological and communicative networks so deeply, that it almost resembles a kind of ritual. Even in religious texts and traditions, migration is recommended as a way to ease suffering and sustain life.

On the other hand, the growth and development of human societies as we know them today are the results of such migrations and the racial and national intermixing they’ve caused. Every form of displacement involves both destruction and construction. The past is left behind, and a new world and encounter are forged. Uprooting and migrating are akin to death and rebirth—an existential crisis that disrupts the familiar fabric of life. This means that the recognition and identity of a person, which take shape in relation to others, are also disrupted. Uprooting, then, equates to a form of emptiness, and in the new setting, this broken identity must be rediscovered and rebuilt.

Given this, it’s evident that identity crisis is one of the main consequences of migration. In this context, Lost Whispers in the Distance explores illegal migration—a situation in which the loss and rebuilding of identity are even more intense, tied closely to the erosion of human dignity. The perilous paths, the gamble on life and possessions, life in group camps, displacement, entrusting one’s safety to human traffickers—all these factors, alongside the inherent struggles of uprooting, destroy personal dignity. The undocumented asylum seeker engages in a kind of self-erasure and self-destruction to make escape possible and be reborn under new circumstances.

But the storm of escape births mismatched children.

Forouzhesh’s camera, in its portrayal of the geography and condition of asylum seekers in the camp, depicts this loss of dignity and fundamental humiliation without judgment and within the fabric of reality. A line of despair runs through the eyes and words of the film’s subjects; it’s as if displacement has transformed from a chapter in their lives to an unalterable destiny.

In Lost Whispers in the Distance, the filmmaker achieves two key things: first, he approaches both the people and the subject without judgment, and second, he maintains a balanced distance in that closeness. Although he asks his human subjects why they chose illegal migration and whether they regret it, he never lets these questions slide into judgment—because to judge is, in itself, to belittle the circumstances of the film’s subjects. And this is precisely what the film aims to avoid. Instead, it strives to depict the inherent dignity that has been overlooked—and that is the documentary’s greatest success: restoring dignity.

The film’s perspective remains firmly in the realm of observation, and when dealing with a subject of this gravity and inherent drama, even observational documentary takes on an activist role. Thus, while Lost Whispers in the Distance remains observational and faithful to its principles, it is not passive. The very act of framing this reality through the chosen structure is itself a form of activism.

Another notable aspect is the distance the camera maintains from its subjects. Except for a few carefully chosen moments, the film avoids emotionally manipulative, individual-focused sentimentality. The people are shown in context, and within the scope of a collective and universal issue. The imagery is clear and precise, approaching its subjects only as much as needed to convey the broader narrative of illegal immigration and raise awareness. Therefore, instead of focusing on individual experiences, the film highlights human behavior within its social setting—this is what gains significance.

The reality depicted in the film is deeply bitter and impactful. Yet rather than dramatizing the tragedy, the filmmaker visually reflects this bleakness and cold atmosphere. The film’s muted, cold visual tone ensures that even in daylight under the sun, the imagery leans toward darkness, evoking an endless night. Coldness plays a key role, intensifying the sense of vulnerability and helplessness throughout the film. This is why the film’s visual emphasis on snowy landscapes significantly enhances its emotional resonance.

Article / Film Reviews / Reviews / Reviews

Review | Lost Whispers in the Distance: Honest, Noble, and Impactful

June 25, 2022

By Abbas Karimi
June 25, 2022
Source: Jam-e Jam Newspaper

Lost Whispers in the Distance, a documentary by Mansour Forouzesh, carries a poetic title that primes the viewer for a lyrical, impressionistic experience. Yet, within minutes, it reveals itself as an observational documentary — journalistic, sincere, and neutral — offering a clear-eyed look at the phenomenon of asylum-seeking and illegal migration.

The film examines the asylum crisis through various cases and, after presenting a range of factual and emotional material, subtly concludes that most attempts at asylum fail — and that the voices of these individuals remain unheard, like distant whispers far from home.

Structured with a parallel yet chronological approach, the director builds his narrative using the following elements:

Verified statistical data presented in text;
Firsthand experiences from migrants, primarily through interviews that form the film’s emotional core;
Observational scenes of daily migrant life, evoking joy, sorrow, rage, and hardship;
Recorded phone calls with a human trafficker explaining how to cross borders illegally.

Also responsible for editing, the director assembles this material with intelligence and restraint, avoiding narrative fatigue by maintaining variety in structure. However, what’s notably absent — perhaps intentionally — is any glimpse into the daily lives of ordinary citizens in the host country. Including such scenes could have deepened the film’s impact by allowing viewers to contrast the bleakness of camp life with a more normalized existence outside.

Shot largely with a handheld camera in a spontaneous, unstructured style, the film captures its subjects in real time — a necessity given the unpredictable and often tense settings. The opening static shots of the camp’s cold, desolate spaces effectively convey the inertia and gloom that defines daily life for its residents.

Due to its raw documentary style and observational tone, the film uses minimal music — a choice that aligns with the subdued mood of the camps. Still, the bleak atmosphere rarely demands more sonic embellishment.

Some interviews, particularly with individuals who struggle to articulate themselves, can feel long or repetitive. This repetitiveness is intentional — an editorial choice to emphasize the shared nature of these experiences — but at times it edges toward monotony. Occasionally, the film feels more like a radio report than a visual narrative. In such moments, inserting cutaway scenes of urban environments or daily life could have revived the pacing and added visual variety.

Viewed as a whole, Lost Whispers in the Distance is an honest, dignified, and deeply affecting film. With a few more scenes or added layers, it might have reached even greater artistic and emotional resonance. Nonetheless, it remains an essential and educational watch for all audiences.

— Abbas Karimi Abbasi, poet and critic

Film Reviews

A Heart-Wrenching Exploration of Migration and Hope by Mona Monsefi

January 16, 2022

by Mona Monsefi

“Lost Whispers in the Distance” demonstrates that a compelling documentary needs only a simple camera and a skilled director with a sensitive soul to fill the gaps in the narrative of migration. This documentary provides an unfiltered look at the challenges faced by a group of Iranian and Afghan refugees in a Serbian camp who have left their pasts behind in hopes of shaping a brighter future. In their pursuit of this future, they have lost their societal status and now struggle with the hardships of their ongoing journey.

Mansour Forouzesh, the film’s director, writer, and cinematographer, opens with long, cold, and methodically slow shots of signs and winter roads, accompanied by a man’s voice singing about loneliness and lost hopes. These early shots set the stage for the story to come. This simplicity and gradual introduction are hallmarks of Forouzesh’s style, as seen in his other films such as “A Few Knots Away,” “The Hose,” and “Into Bahangar.”

The one-hour documentary, filmed in Serbia, is well-structured and maintains a professional balance between visuals and the characters’ narratives. The stories, including that of a young woman, Masoumeh, who has been traveling with an infant for three years, and those of young, unregistered male refugees living in a dilapidated building outside the camp, are both shocking and heart-wrenching. However, the most touching aspect is the portrayal of refugees whose hopes and dreams have been shattered, turning them into distant fantasies. The film opens viewers’ eyes to the sorrowful agony of people with no way back and only a perilous path forward. This forward movement often involves entering “the game,” where refugees gamble everything to reach their ideal destination by paying smugglers. Predictably, the “games” often fail, leaving most participants broke.

Forouzesh uses his past experiences to harness the power of imagery and symbolism to complement the characters’ narrations. This symbolism is not imposed on the narration but drawn from it. For example, a scene where a family searches for the perfect pomegranate for a traditional Iranian celebration delicately ties the characters to their pasts and their attempts to maintain their roots and keep the family together. The pomegranate contrasts with “the game,” where characters bet everything for a glimmer of hope, delving even deeper into the unknown. The setting of the film also effectively uses symbolism, with roads, shared labyrinth-like camp rooms, and ruined buildings richly reflecting the characters’ lives.

The refugees genuinely share their experiences, blending facts and fictions of their journey, creating a truly fascinating viewing experience enhanced by thought-provoking visuals, songs, and melancholy music. “Lost Whispers in the Distance” requires more than one viewing to capture all its intricate messages. The film promises “to paint a comprehensible picture for those who decide to migrate illegally through dangerous routes,” and it delivers on that promise by making the whispers of these forgotten travelers heard.

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