Color of Attachment

Directed by João Pedro Prado

Synopsis:
A young German-Persian filmmaker returns to her hometown of Berlin to present her new short film. Through a series of uncanny encounters, she’ll realize that her place in the world is not bound by a nationality, but by a sense of estrangement itself.

Director Statement:
This screenplay by Tehran-based author Meena Sadeghi is an adapted version of the one that was to be filmed in Iran in 2022 by a team from Film University Babelsberg. However, because the decades-old exchange program was shut down by the regime at the beginning of the feminist revolution, we had the story set in Berlin while retaining Meena's core message: that an artist need not be tied to a particular nationality, but rather to the human condition of alienation in the world. In the spirit of the exchange, we as an international team in Berlin shot a Persian script with a German-Iranian actress in the lead. The starting point for the story is the sacred yet everyday place of poetry in Persian culture, as well as the Fal-e Hafez, an ancient tradition in which the reader asks the poet Hafiz for advice when she finds herself in a difficult situation. In the film, the main character Pardis does everything that would be forbidden in Iran: Walk around without a headscarf, go to a bar and dance. All while presenting her art openly and entering discussions surrounding it.