PIG
As a serial killer targeting the country’s best filmmakers terrorizes Tehran, one cocky but deeply neurotic director doesn’t know whether to be fearful or offended not to have made the hit list in this Iranian satire.
Like so many famous men, film director Hasan Kasmai (Hasan Majuni) is equal parts egomaniac and painfully insecure man-child. After being blacklisted from filmmaking by the Iranian government, Hasan is embarrassed to be helming high-concept insecticide commercials and even more humiliated when his mistress and former leading lady Shiva (Leila Hatami) jumps ship to work with a pretentious young hack. Meanwhile, Tehran is abuzz with the news that a mysterious serial killer has been beheading prominent filmmakers, leaving Hasan both paranoid and strangely miffed that he hasn’t yet been targeted. With PIG, director Mani Haghighi has crafted a dark and delirious comedy, adding an overzealous stalker, gun-toting matriarch, and a cadre of women dressed as cockroaches to the list of zany complications facing his hapless protagonist. Majuni is hilarious and oddly sympathetic as bushy-haired, heavy metal-loving Hasan, whose brutish persona masks his neediness and desire for reassurance from the women in his life. Amidst a multitude of screwball antics, Haghighi offers a pointed critique of artistic censorship in contemporary Iran, and a hilariously biting satire of the artistic ego in overdrive.
CAST: Hasan Majuni, Leila Hatami, Leili Rashidi, Parinaz Izadyar
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