A poetic essay meticulously constructed from clips of Iranian 8mm home videos from bygone days. As we watch birthdays and wedding parties, people dancing, laughing, swimming or just relaxing, a narrator, in a contemplative, sometimes heavy voice, enumerates series of dry facts. But what does it matter how many kisses one received, how many times one truly laughed or what time one went to bed or got up? Can adding up such numbers sum up a life?
These listings of figures alternate with brief confessional phrases that evoke an entire hidden world: “Because I am funny, people think I'm happy,” and “I love myself less than I have been loved.” Subtotals was inspired by the eponymous short story by Gregory Burnham and Édouard Levé's novel Autoportrait.
Credits
Director
Mohammadreza Farzad
Production
Dagna Kidoń for Film School in Łódź, Visual Narratives Laboratory (vnLab), VR/AR Studio, Krzysztof Franek for Film School in Łódź, Visual Narratives Laboratory (vnLab), VR/AR Studio, Stanislaw Liguzinski for Filmarcades, Kuba Mikurda for CoLab Pictures
Executive producer
Afsun Moshiry for Road River Films
Co-production
Afsun Moshiry for Road River Films
Editing
Amir Adibparvar
Related sets
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Female inmates in a Tehran prison give a rare voice to their shocking crimes and punishments.
More infoIDFA history
2022
Dutch Premiere
Best of Fests
Best of Fests
2022