Cesarean Weekend

The mood in the summer villa in northern Iran, near the Caspian Sea, is exuberant. Milad and Armin gather with friends for a weekend shaped by effortless closeness. The news that Bita is pregnant by Milad adds to the fragility of their relationship. The next morning, the hosts’ fathers arrive, each carrying their own fractures. What unfolds is both confrontation and subtle realignment. Generations drift through the house and its thresholds: childhood/parenthood, proximity/withdrawal, desire/responsibility. The villa as a social score of verbal and physical encounters. Cesarean Weekend resists moral judgment. The sea watches; music takes over where language ends. Rather than issuing a political statement, the film traces a parallel social reality – lives unfolding beyond prescribed roles, bound by affection and shifting forms of masculinity. Shirvani’s method is central to this openness: Without rehearsals and through live direction from behind the camera, he creates a cinema of presence in which control and improvisation coexist. Bodies are exposed to space and duration; skin becomes a surface of experience before meaning settles. (Afsun Moshiry)

Mohammad Shirvani is an Iranian filmmaker and video artist. His films explore everyday life and societal structures through formally rigorous and conceptually bold approaches. His video installations extend cinematic language into sculptural and durational forms. His practice reflects a sustained interest in perception, repetition, and the conditions of spectatorship. Shirvani’s short The Circle was selected for the Semaine de la Critique at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999. His second feature, Fat Shaker, won the Tiger Award for Best Film at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2013.

Director Mohammad Shirvani. Screenplay Mohammad Shirvani. Cinematography Mohammad Shirvani. Editing Mohammad Shirvani. Music Reza Rostamian. Sound Design Oveis Derakhshan. Casting Mohammad Shirvani. Producer Mohammad Shirvani. Executive Producer Mohammad Shirvani. Production company Alternative Film Lab (Teheran, Iran). With Nader Mashayekhi, Peyman Yeganeh, Milad Ahmadzadeh, Armin Shirvani, Bita Jamshidi.

Films: 1999: The Circle (short film). 2000: The Candidate (short film). 2001: To Consent (short film), Souvenir (short film). 2002: Navel (short film), The Cherries Which Were Canned (short film). 2003: Iranian Conserve (short film). 2005: The Calm City (short film), President Mir Qanbar. 2006: Where Is Leili?. 2007: 444 Days. 2008: Seven Blind Women Filmmakers. 2009: Iranian Cookbook. 2010: 021, Tehran. 2011: Telescope. 2013: Fat Shaker. 2014: Six Eyes (short film). 2026: Cesarean Weekend.