EIFF 2025: Mortician
A dour, middle-aged Iranian mortician forms a bond with a rebellious young pop star wanted by the Iranian regime in this funny and politically potent piece of lo-fi cinema
Mortician, the latest film from Abdolreza Kahani, is another of what the Montreal-based Iranian filmmaker calls his “one-person cinema”. With no funding or crew, Kahani shot the film himself on his iPhone with a handful of actors. The filmmaking may be impoverished, but it’s rich with visual invention.
The film concerns Mojtaba (Nima Sadrzadeh), a sadsack Iranian who works as an itinerant body washer in Canada. He dutifully travels the country to clean the corpses of his deceased countrymen, although not every client has met their maker. There’s one fellow who thinks a body washing will cure his insomnia, for example, while another is a sexually promiscuous young woman who wants to learn how to clean her saintly grandmother once she passes in an attempt to absorb her virtuousness. Mortician properly kicks into gear when Mojtaba meets dissident pop star Jana (Golazin Ardestani), whose protest songs criticising the Iranian regime have made her a target. Rather than wait for her inevitable assassination, she’s going to do the job herself, live on camera, as the ultimate act of defiance, and she asks for Mojtaba’s help.
Mojtaba isn’t exactly enthusiastic about this freelance commission, but takes it on reluctantly as his current job seems at risk, and he has an extended family back home who rely on his paycheck. As he joins Jana in her snowbound cabin, a sort of odd-couple buddy comedy emerges, with the lugubrious mortician and the sparky singer forming a charming chalk-and-cheese bond. Lighthearted the film may seem, but the shadow of paranoia never quite lifts.
Kahani's recent “one-person cinema” run (which also includes last year's EIFF competition entry, A Shrine) calls to mind the work Jafar Panahi made during his years under house arrest, not just in the films' lo-fi aesthetic and pluckish resourcefulness, but in their deft blend of gentle comedy with political anger. Be prepared: Mortician may present as a lark, but it's got within it some devastating left-turns that remind us of the real world dangers for people under the thumb of this callous regime.
Mortician had its world premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival