Under the shadow

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Movie
German title Under the shadow
Original title زیر سایه 
(Zir-e Sayeh)
Country of production United Kingdom , Jordan , Qatar
original language Farsi
Publishing year 2016
length 84 minutes
Rod
Director Babak Anvari
script Babak Anvari
production Emily Leo ,
Oliver Roskill ,
Lucan Toh
music Gavin Cullen ,
Will McGillivray
camera Kit Fraser
cut Chris Barwell
occupation

Under the Shadow ( Persian زیر سایه Zir-e Sayeh ) is a2016 horror film set in Iran during the First Gulf War . The film is the directorial debut of Babak Anvari , who also wrote the script.

action

In 1988, the last year of the Gulf War, the married couple Iraj and Shideh lived with their daughter Dorsa in a rented apartment in war-torn Tehran . Iraj is a resident doctor, Shideh a former medical student who was banned from studying a few years earlier because of political activities. At the beginning of the film, Shideh receives an administrative decision that she is not allowed to resume her studies, which puts a lot of strain on her and her relationship with her husband as a result. Iraj is called up for annual military service and has to go to the front. He advises Shideh to move in with Dorsa to live with his parents, but Shideh decides to stay in Tehran.

Little Dorsa is plagued by nightmares after her father's departure. Influenced by the ghost stories of a boy in the neighborhood who was traumatized by the death of his parents, she tells her mother about the presence of jinns that she sees. Shideh dismisses this as childish talk, but from then on suffers from nightmares himself. On one of the following days, an Iraqi rocket penetrated the roof of the apartment building without exploding; an elderly man in the apartment above Shideh's apartment that was hit dies of a heart attack. In the chaos surrounding the missile attack, Dorsa's favorite doll, Kimia, is lost - the girl claims that the jinn stole her. Dorsa's condition worsens, she has a fever, talks to invisible people and frenetically searches for her doll. Shideh's nightmares become livelier, during the day she sees strangers in her apartment, at night she has visions of her husband, who accuses her of failing to raise Dorsa and in life in general.

The other residents of the apartment building are gradually leaving Tehran to seek protection from the bombing attacks. Before she also leaves, the landlord's wife, Shideh, explains her views on jinn in a chance conversation: They actually exist, take possession of people and exercise power over them as long as they are in possession of a personal property of the person concerned . After Shideh and Dorsa are the last remaining residents of the house, the paranormal phenomena reach a new level. In the apartment Shideh sees an old man who disappears through a crack in the ceiling into the apartment above, and the shapes of a woman wrapped in a chador who seems to be after Dorsa. Dorsa, in turn, reports on conversations with an invisible, apparently well-meaning woman, who repeatedly tells her that she needs her doll in order to be spared the jinn.

Shideh decides to flee, but has to promise Dorsa to find her doll first. While searching, she discovers on the roof of the house, looking through the rocket crater into the apartment below, her medicine textbook, believed to be safely locked away in a drawer, a present from her deceased mother. In the drawer, instead of the book, she finds the torn up doll, which leads to a falling out with Dorsa, who sees her mother responsible for this. After several attacks, some of them physical, in which the supernatural presences also take the form of Dorsa, Shideh and her daughter manage to escape by car. The ending allows two interpretations: On the one hand, the camera shows that the doll's head, which was accidentally torn off during the escape, and Shideh's medicine book are still in the house, so that the jinn, if they existed, still have power over Shideh and Dorsa; on the other hand, director Anvari suggests in dialogues between Shideh and her husband that Shideh could be delusional.

History of origin

Under the Shadow , although the film is set in Iran and held in Farsi , is not an Iranian production. The executive production company was the British company Wigwam Films, with funding from companies and institutions from Great Britain, Qatar and Jordan, and the shooting was in Amman , Jordan. The film premiered on January 22nd, 2016 at the Sundance Film Festival . Even before the festival premiere, the streaming service Netflix secured the worldwide marketing rights. Other festivals where the film was shown were the South by Southwest Film Festival , the San Francisco International Film Festival , the Seattle International Film Festival , the Sydney Film Festival , the Zurich Film Festival , the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival and the Fantasy Film festival .

reception

From 20 aggregated ratings, Under the Shadow achieved a score of 84 on Metacritic ; Rotten Tomatoes aggregated 66 reviews for an overall rating of 98%.

Christian Horn drew parallels on Filmstarts.de to the Australian horror film The Babadook . He praised the fact that Anvari effectively combined the two levels of action, the Gulf War and horror, as well as the director's dramaturgy, who created an unsettling effect for the viewer with calm scenes of tension between mother and daughter and, as a contrast, with hectic demons. Horn also pointed out that the plot is integrated into a "carefully drawn [...] historical background" that contributes to a multi-layered cinematic experience. He criticized a superficial representation of the characters. Mark Kermode compared Under the Shadow to the Farsi thriller A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night , Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone and Hideo Nakata's Dark Water in the Guardian . Kermode rated the film as "well thought-out, provocative and (as the playing time continues) increasingly frightening food that works as a feminist fable, as a drama of a breaking family and as a full-fledged horror thriller". He particularly highlighted the work of cameraman Kit Fraser , who skilfully interweave neorealistic hand-held camera shots in the course of the film and gradually switched to an edgy, expressionistic style that visualized Shideh's life slowly turning into a nightmare. For the New Yorker , Anthony Lane analyzed that director Anvari cleverly weave genre-typical elements of horror films into the film - lights that suddenly go out, having to go to a cellar - which can be traced back to the horror of everyday life in Iran at the time. Lane emphasized the feminist element of the film with its leading actress, who was irritable, moody, dignified, infinitely tired, determined and brave at the same time, both within a suppressive society and in the face of horror in her apartment.

In July 2016, Under the Shadow was awarded the Narcisse Prize for the best feature film at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival . The film won the Fresh Blood Award at the Fantasy Filmfest. After being nominated for Best British Film at the 2017 British Academy Film Awards , Under the Shadow was Britain's nomination for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2017 Academy Awards , but was not nominated.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ramin Setoodeh, Brent Lang: Sundance: Netflix Acquires Iranian Horror Movie 'Under the Shadow'. In: Variety . January 21, 2016, accessed March 5, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Under the Shadow. In: Metacritic.com. Retrieved March 6, 2017 (English).
  3. ↑ Under the Shadow. In: Rotten Tomatoes . Retrieved March 6, 2017 (English).
  4. ↑ Under the Shadow. In: Filmstarts.de. Retrieved March 6, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Mark Kermode: Under the Shadow review - ghostly Iranian gem. In: The Guardian . October 2, 2016, accessed March 6, 2017 .
  6. ^ Anthony Lane: The Girl on the Train and Under the Shadow. In: The New Yorker . October 17, 2019, accessed March 6, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Christopher O'Keeffe: Neuchâtel 2016: Iranian Horror Under The Shadow Wins Grand Prize. In: ScreenAnarchy.com. July 9, 2016, accessed March 6, 2017 .
  8. ↑ Dave McNary: Iranian Horror Movie 'Under the Shadow' Selected as UK Foreign-Language Oscar Entry. In: Variety . September 21, 2016, accessed March 6, 2017 .