Careles Crime

Four men devise a plan to start a fire. The target: a movie theatre where currently they are showing a movie about an unexploded rocket. The theatre is packed with people and the four men are starting to show doubts and frustration. This event is a repetition from what happened forty years ago. During the uprising and protests of the Iranian Revolution, that would overthrow Sha’s regime, protesters set fire to movie theatres as a way of showing opposition to Western culture. In one tragic case, the visitors could not evacuate on time and only eight people survived. Four hundred others burned alive.

Careless Crime does not try to call historic events into being, but tries to tell something about the part cinema plays in the Iranian society. Director Shahram Mokri gives us a provocative film with inventive and often disorienting long takes. An intriguing puzzle where fact, fiction, present and past keep blurring together.