It
is tough to be a kid in Iran. It is also hard to live with dignity as a woman
and hard to live at all as a LGBT Iranian. Human rights for everyone remains a
serious issue in the country, but the potential wartime death of innocence has
become an increasingly pressing and universal concern throughout global
battlefields. However, California-based filmmaker Monely Soltani explores it
from a distinctly Persian perspective in the narrative short film Desert Lullabies (trailer here), which screens
during MIX NYC: the 27th New York Queer Experimental Film Festival.
Tara’s
mother Homa has a hard time explaining why her dissident father has not yet
returned as he promised. She has an even harder time explaining why they must
flee their home at dawn. She has just received a last-minute warning the government
imminently plans raze their rebellious village along with all its inhabitants,
but that is an awful lot to burden a young child with.
As
she slips into a feverish slumber, Tara will be visited by the spirit of her
beloved grandmother and the goddess Anahita, but do not expect a happy ending,
per se. Despite Desert’s fable-like
vibe, reality still is what it is. Nonetheless, simply carrying on constitutes
a victory.
Shot
on location in Death Valley, but utilizing extensive green screen work, Desert seems to exist eerily out of
time, like some sort of near future-Medieval dystopia. Some of the effects might
somewhat reflect Soltani’s presumed budget constraints, but the evocative
interiors of Homa’s modest home have a Spartan but tangibly lived-in feel.
While
Desert is only fifteen minutes long,
Shila Ommi’s performance as Homa packs quite a punch. Based on Soltani’s own
mother, she vividly conveys all of Homa’s motherly courage and desperation. As
Tara, Ariana Molkara’s work is also unusually sensitive and unaffected. Viewers
will definitely believe they are family—a tragically incomplete family.
Soltani
does not belabor the particulars of the current regime, but there are enough
Iranian signifiers, starting with the Persian dialogue, to cue viewers’
pre-existing context. In fact, it could be seen as part the leading edge of an
emerging Persian-American cinema, along with Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
