Festival de Cannes 2022 | “Imagine”, fantasy on the edge of reality

“Imagine“, directed by Ali Behrad, was one of the 7 feature films screened during Cannes Film Festival’s Critics’ Week.

An unusual scene opens the film. A Cab Driver (Mehrdad Sedighian) picks up a woman (Leila Hatami), who has just scattered the ashes of her brother at night. And in the entire story, the cab is the main location. Imagine is a dialogue-based movie and the dialogues between the cab driver and the passenger make up the plot. 

The woman repeatedly rides into the man’s taxi to open a new chapter throughout the movie. The two talk about everything. Everything from romance to music and sports. The driver is mostly a listener and an obsession with the woman is evident in his behavior, but he gives his opinion sometimes, and definitely, he has his own story in his head. Thus, it’s difficult to identify who is the main character of the film. 

Ali Behrad narrates a mysterious tale. Dreamy imagery is featured in the film, sometimes leaving the viewer with the sense that what is seen hasn’t actually happened. The film is more like a dream. As the story continues, there are many fantasy sequences that make Imagine unique. Behrad deliberately does not adhere to the usual rules of narration so that the viewer is fully engaged in the story. 

It is not just its mode of narration that makes Imagine different. The film has two main characters who make up the story of the film: Those played by Hatami and Sedighiyan. The picture that Ali Behrad shows of Hatami is completely different from what we have seen of her in the cinema so far. Additionally, Sedighiyan’s role keeps the audience in between fantasy and reality smoothly and deftly.

Ali Behrad believes he has a different approach to filmmaking and hopes to be different from other Iranian directors. He aims to continue working in this unusual way in the future. 

The Semaine de la Critique (Critics Week) is a parallel section of the Cannes Film Festival created by the French Union of Film Critics in 1962. The festival showcases first feature films and new talents. A major part of La Semaine de la Critique’s scope of action includes accompanying selected short film directors through Next Step. The directors attend a one-week workshop to help them move closer to feature filmmaking.

Aftersun (Charlotte Wells), Alma Viva (Cristèle Alves Meira), Dalva (Emmanuelle Nicot), La Jauría (Andrés Ramírez Pulido), Summer Scars (Simon Rieth), Imagine (Ali Behrad), and The Woodcutter Story (Mikko Myllylahti) are the seven feature films screened in the competition section of the critics’ week.