This interview was recorded prior to the mass killings of civilians in Iran in January 2026.The conversation was translated from Farsi to English in person by Afsun Moshiri.
Barbara Wurm (BW): Mohammad, it is a great pleasure to have you in the Forum. We are very happy to be hosting the world premiere of your third feature-length film, CESAREAN WEEKEND, and delighted to have such a strong and uncompromising work in our lineup. Perhaps we can begin with a quote you shared with us about this film: that you want to become a child again. At around fifty, you said, as you were making your third feature-length film, you wanted to return to a childlike way of seeing, because seeing should always come before meaning solidifies. I’d like to briefly respond to that. For me, the film poses a profound challenge to perception. Of course, we try to grasp its meaning, but we are ultimately haunted by what we see. You made it possible for me to become a child again since the film is so deeply rooted in the act of seeing.
Mohammad Shirvani (MS): As I moved along, I gradually realized that I might be a perceptive filmmaker rather than someone who simply looks at their surroundings and tries to reproduce them. When I was painting, I worked in this way. But when I began making films, it was not about copying what I saw around me in a one-to-one manner. You first had to feel something – an event would form inside you – and then, without you consciously knowing how, the work would emerge. At one point, I thought I would not be a good painter because I felt I lacked imagination in painting and could only paint what I saw very well. But when I set painting aside and moved into filmmaking, I realized that I had, in fact, become a painter because I discovered an imagination that was not limited to reproducing what I see. Gradually, I understood that I wanted something more than simply reporting on what was happening. That is why, when I was faced with situations, I felt there was an energy trapped within things, an energy I needed to release.
BW: Energy is a good keyword. The film is full of energy and authenticity. Can you describe the method of shooting, which seems to entail a lot of improvisation while also following a general script idea?
MS: Over the years, across the films I have made, I have tried all kinds of approaches and experiments. For some projects, I worked with a complete script and a detailed découpage prepared in advance; for others, I relied on a treatment, or worked without any prior plan at all. I have explored many different modes. This film, however, feels like a kind of caesarean section, a film that came into being with just four lines and a drawing as the starting point from which I began to work.
This film feels like a kind of caesarean section, a film that came into being with just four lines and a drawing as the starting point.
BW: Of course we want to know which lines.
MS: Maybe it’s best if I give a bit of background: I first made a film about the young couple Milad and Bita in my apartment. The idea was simple: over the course of one night, a couple tries to recreate their first date after three and a half years together, at a point when the initial intensity of the relationship has faded. The film largely found its form in the editing; we ended up with a three-hour rough cut, and for a moment I even thought it could exist as a feature on its own. When we later watched the fine cut together with Milad, Bita and my son, I expected my son not to like it. But to my surprise, his eyes filled with tears. He was deeply moved. Sitting next to Milad, I suddenly noticed how naturally my son and him connected. Later, my son told me that my first two films, NAHF (NAVEL) [2002] and FAT SHAKER [2013], felt like attempts toward something, whereas this film felt like an attempt to reach love itself, to touch its warmth. That evening was meant for my son and me to spend time together, but instead he chose to go out with Milad. When they returned hours later, they had become very close. That’s when I realized that both of them had complicated relationships with their fathers; both came from separated families. I thought: this is a film about two boys who have each other, and about their fathers. One of the fathers, Peyman, was already present. I had known him for years and knew he would be right for the role. For the second father, I thought of a conductor friend who travels between Austria and Iran. That same night, we decided to make a film about two sons and two fathers who, by chance, find themselves drawn into a shared situation after a long time. So what were those four lines and the drawing? Simply this: two boys with a deeply ‘oriental’ friendship throw a party on a weekend in a villa near the Caspian Sea. The next morning, their fathers appear. That was the entire story. A month later, I found a villa, drew it, and mapped it out: the top floor for the party for the young people, the middle floor as a transitional space for mothers and children, and the bottom floor – by the pool – for the fathers. That was the whole initial concept.
BW: Let’s imagine the set itself. You are, in a sense, an impersonalized camera – yet also a kind of performer. What does it look like when you are at work? When you speak about the concept of the film, all of this seems to happen behind the camera. But now in front of the camera, improvisation continues and the biographies of certain people enter the film. How does this process work?
MS: The three feature films I’ve made were all done differently. My first film, NAHF, was made at a time when I wasn’t alone in the financing. I had a partner, and there was enough money. I rented a house for three months and had the actors live there. Everyone had their own room and brought their personal belongings. Only after those three months did I begin shooting. So the first thing I did in NAHF was to make people live together. By the time I made FAT SHAKER, I was more experienced, but also poorer, and I had much less time. Still, the process was almost the same. With CESAREAN WEEKEND, however, I could only afford to have the villa for four or five days. That meant the people in this film shared that space for no more than four or five days. I never rehearse with actors in advance. Whether I have a complete script, four lines, or no script at all, I don’t give the screenplay to the actors to memorize, analyze, or construct the film in their heads. I avoid that completely. Everything unfolds live, from behind the camera. All mise-en-scène and all dialogue are given in the moment, directly from behind the camera. For me, the first take is extremely important. In NAHF, I knew the concepts well and designed them carefully, but I left the people completely free within those concepts. In FAT SHAKER, I also designed the concepts, but I did not give the people any freedom at all, because it was a film critiquing dictatorship, and I wanted the directing itself to be fully dictatorial.
There is a well-known expression in art: there is no rehearsal, only skin
In CESAREAN WEEKEND, the method combines both approaches: control alongside freedom and improvisation. There is a well-known expression in art: there is no rehearsal, only skin. Instead of rehearsing, we first place the actors’ skin and my skin into the space, and the shooting happens the next day. For example, in the final scene of CESAREAN WEEKEND, in the sea scene with the fathers, the first day was only about going there so the fathers could get their skin wet. The only explanation I gave the two fathers was this: I told Peyman that in this sea, Nader would, in fact, experience his own death but Nader himself was not supposed to know this. On the first day, based only on this concept, I told them they were free to perform however they wanted within a framework that it was meant to be a kind of farewell. What mattered to me was simply that their skin got wet and that they had that experience. The next day, however, I increased control and said: now we throw away all the dialogue you were saying yesterday. If anything is needed, I will prompt you from behind the camera. When we return to shoot, I am fully inside the scene myself as both cinematographer and director. I am in the water, close to their shared emotional state. And in that space, things happen that are beyond anyone’s intention. For example, a dead dog appeared in the water. One of the actors saw it, and I transformed that dead body into a dream, a dream that appears in the final scene of the film. I didn’t want to explain that image simply as a dead dog. I treated it in a way that, later, when I finish shooting and sat down to edit, I suddenly found myself crying uncontrollably while watching that dream sequence and I didn’t even know why. It happened only once at the first encounter with the scene at the editing table. And when I see how the audiences responds – one person says it’s as if Nader is pulling his roots out of the water; another says Nader is dragging out his own corpse – I take great pleasure in the fact that a single scene can generate so many different meanings.
BW: In the final scene you speak about, the water appears as a very natural element—something that allows the body to feel itself more fully, to become freer. It seems to help the bodies become unguarded, allowing them to exist with a sense of exposure and openness.
MS: It was only during the editing process, that I began to realize how important skin is here. More than in any of my other films, skin – almost even before the body itself – seems to matter. And of course, you don’t reach the skin unless the clothes are removed. One reason is simply that the body is important to me since I live in a culture where the body is heavily suppressed and denied. I grew up in a religious family; my mother or my sister, for example, were expected to dress in a certain way. All of this may have shaped why the body has become such a central concern for me in cinema. And maybe, if I were to put it in one sentence, it has to do with a kind of imprisoned freedom. It is as if, through the camera, you are trying to release that confined freedom – in spaces, in places, in objects, and in bodies.
BW: The film also unfolds as a conceptual, inter-generational dialogue. We first encounter the relationship between the two young men, a relationship that is physical as well as emotional, marked by intimacy and love. This intimacy then seems to cast a spell on the two fathers in the pool, who themselves begin to move closer to one another. Watching films from Iran, I am often particularly attentive to questions of women and gender. From a female perspective, one frequently encounters a nostalgia for earlier times, imagined as periods of greater freedom. What struck me about this film, however, is that it seems to shift the focus toward masculinity. For me, the film actively questions masculinity and gestures toward the possibility of another form of it. How does the encounter between generations, between the sons and their elders, reshape or challenge inherited ideas of what masculinity can be?
MS: I understand that in recent years, many films around the world have been made with female protagonists and with femininity strongly present. In our own country as well, after the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ movement, underground cinema has moved toward more female-centered films. But since I usually don’t work on commission from inside or outside, and maybe I am in an anti-mode, I think about what I personally need at a given moment. I follow that need and make something that might also be useful for others and if it is, that’s great. That’s why I agree with you that this film is a film about the world of men, but it is feminist nonetheless.
This film is a film about the world of men, but it is feminist nonetheless
The friendship between Armin and Milad may, from a Western viewer’s perspective, invite speculation that there is something ‘different’ or ambiguous between them. But this way of relating comes from my own adolescence, from what I would describe as an ‘oriental’ form of friendship. I mean two boys sleeping in the same bed with tenderness; holding hands while walking in nature; touching, hugging, and expressing affection openly. This kind of intimacy has always been meaningful to me. I want to be clear that this was not shaped in response to contemporary LGBTQ+ discourses or global trends. I am still straight and I had no intention of framing this intimacy to satisfy Western expectations or to make the film more legible, marketable, or economically secure. It comes from lived experience, not from strategy.
BW: I’d like to return to your biography as a filmmaker. You have made three feature films over a span of more than twenty years: in 2002, 2013, and now in 2026. I would like to ask how you perceive the changes across this period, particularly in relation to your way of filmmaking. I understand that CESAREAN WEEKEND is the result of many different factors and is, at the same time, a deeply personal film. Yet beyond the personal, it seems to speak to something broader: not necessarily an underground society, but a parallel one – a sense of collective spirit, of people who share a great deal, even when they struggle to articulate it. These difficulties of communication are not limited to one generation; they exist between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. Could you reflect on how you see your filmmaking today and your role as a cultural figure within the larger arc of the past twenty plus years?
MS: The point is this: some people like to turn hardship into a kind of narrative, to build stories around difficulty in order to elicit sympathy from the other side, whether in speech or in their films. For many years now, I haven’t liked talking about hardships, or struggles. To be honest, Iranian films that try to attract Western sympathy are not among my favorites. That doesn’t mean I’m in favor of films that whitewash everything and say that all is fine and rosy. I have a problem with those as well. Rather than saying ‘there is no freedom, please help us,’ I prefer to make a film that summons freedom, a film in which freedom can be felt by Iranian and non-Iranian audiences alike. I’ve had poet friends who have always written poems praising freedom, and I’ve told them: I prefer, as a filmmaker, not to use the word ‘freedom’ the way you do as a poet, but instead to help that imprisoned freedom itself to be released, to be exposed. Of course, the pressures that many independent and underground filmmakers endure are immense.
I prefer, as a filmmaker, not to use the word ‘freedom’ the way you do as a poet, but instead to help that imprisoned freedom itself to be released
I think that films labeled as ‘political films’ or ‘opposition films’ both reduce the reality of Iranian society and, under the banner of opposition, heavily exploit it. Political Iranian films that have gained international attention have often not been well received inside Iran, because perhaps they explain too much too directly for Western audiences. They are too explicit, too surface-level, too often presented in a slogan-like, journalistic structure. As people living inside Iran, we have experienced those realities very deeply. Naturally, Iranian audiences inside the country do not recognize those films as the ultimate truth. But honestly, here I feel compelled to criticize festivals and the Western gaze, which functions today as a kind of orientalist or neo-orientalist lens. It tends to value only one specific model of Iranian cinema. As a result, many other perspectives are not seen. This, in turn, discourages the diverse, unofficial, underground cinematic currents that could otherwise thrive. Young filmmakers become disillusioned: they stop submitting their films to festivals, stop making films altogether, or end up absorbed into the cinema of the Islamic Republic. I’m not saying attention should not be given. I would be happy if a political Iranian film by a fellow filmmaker won the Palme d’Or. But festivals could, for example, create a separate Palme d’Or for political support, or a Human Rights Golden Bear with a much larger cash prize, something clearly defined as activist support. What we see instead is that, year by year, the major festival prizes become smaller in artistic significance, because activism is prioritized over artistic practice. Right now, there is a great deal of disappointment among young Iranian filmmakers toward festivals. Personally, I was so disillusioned that for ten years I did not submit films to festivals. But I wasn’t inactive.
BW: The title CESAREAN WEEKEND suggests an abrupt rupture—something sudden, forced, and unexpected in its unfolding. Our colleague Christiane Büchner also pointed out that cesarean births are often scheduled on weekends. Could you speak about how the title of the film emerged?
MS: This is a very interesting aspect; I wasn’t aware of it. In fact, I myself was born by cesarean, though not on a weekend. For me, the title emerged gradually. I tend to wait for the film to choose its own name. At a certain point, the film suggested WEEKEND. I stayed with that for a while, but then realized it was not a pleasant weekend at all—there is a blade, there is a cutting, there is a peeling; it hurts. From there, the title CESAREAN WEEKEND became inevitable.
BW: Mohammad thank you for speaking with us in such an authentic and open manner. We are very much looking forward to seeing you in Berlin.
MS: The situation is worrying. What happens if things become chaotic and they shut down the internet? Hopefully, we will make it to Berlin and nothing will go wrong. Thank you, Barbara. ‘Be omide didar’, which means ‘hope to see you soon.’
