Bahram is a 40-year-old filmmaker who has spent his entire career making films in Turkish- Azeri, none of which have ever been screened in Iran. His latest work, once again denied permission by the Ministry of Culture, pushes him to the edge of defiance. With his sharp-tongued, Vespa-riding producer Sadaf by his side, he embarks on an underground mission to showcase his film to an Iranian audience — dodging government censors, absurd bureaucracy and his own self-doubts.

DIRECTOR'S NOTES:
Komedie Elahi is grounded in realism, yet uses cinematic form to heighten the absurdity of the world it portrays. It reflects the static, suffocating Iranian bureaucracy in which the protagonist — a 40-year-old director whose films have all been denied screening by the Ministry of Culture — is trapped. The audience experiences the slow grind of censorship firsthand. Real-life filmmakers Bahram and Bahman Ark, who have faced censorship, play fictionalised versions of themselves. Their casting is a meta-textual statement on the film’s themes. Likewise, Sadaf Asgari — banned from working in Iran after attending Cannes for Āyehā-ye zamini — brings a subversive authenticity by playing herself. Humour arises not from comedy but from the absurdity of repression. The convoluted censorship system collapses under its contradictions. The characters respond with sarcasm and quiet wit — humour as endurance where rebellion is perilous. Making the film is itself resistance. Truth lingers in silences, in laughter at unexpected moments. A study in endurance, observation and refusal to disappear, the film’s final image — a dog watching, unblinking — reminds us of cinema’s enduring power to witness.