Salaam Cinema

In 1995, Mohsen Makhmalbaf posted a casting call in an Iranian newspaper to find actors for a film about the centenary of cinema. So many candidates showed up that riots broke out and people were almost trampled. Makhmalbaf decided to change his strategy. Not the original script, but the casting interviews with dozens of men and women would be the basis for his new film. As an enlightened despot he interviews the willing candidates, ordering them to cry within 10 seconds, laugh or dance. People who are quiet and suspicious outside of this setting answer the most intimate questions here – perhaps thanks to the aura of cinema, which seems to create a separate place outside of reality. The wannabe actors surrender to the man they think can determine their fate, not knowing that this is the role that they will play. Even though it's not a representative group, and even though they sometimes seem to lie, these stories still give a voice to people who are so rarely heard in contemporary Iran. Besides playing an intriguing game with the boundaries between fact and fiction, as colleague and countryman Abbas Kiarostami did in and , it also provides insight into the psychology of power and submission.