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