Director's Statement
The reflection of the real-life experiences of the refugees in Dance Iranian Style was our main concern from the very start. The scriptwriter Nafiss Nia and I agreed from the beginning to try to keep it from becoming a sob story even though it's about the harsh reality of daily life for refugees. The mission was to tell a sad story without becoming too sentimental or somber. Another point is that the refugees are generally brave and strong people, mostly highly educated and having great pride. They do not want to be seen as pathetic, but just as human beings on the same level as everyone else. We wanted this film about a refugee to be as powerful as the refugees themselves generally are and with as much dignity as they have. This is how we decided to step onto a path in which fiction and documentary elements come together. We wanted the film not just to tell a story but also to offer something new or different by a somehow different means of approaching the form and storytelling. Using a mix of fictional and non-fictional elements to tell a single story is of course not new to many prominent Iranian filmmakers. This is why Nafiss and I, with our Iranian background, found our inspiration in the works of masterpieces of Iranian cinema like STILL LIFE by Sohrab Shahid-Saless, RUNNER by Amir Naderi, MARRIAGE OF THE BLESSED and A MOMENT OF INNOCENCE by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, CLOSE UP by Abbas Kiarostami and THE MIRROR by Jafar Panahi. Taking our lessons from these films, in Dance Iranian Style we have created situations which do not make it an easy task for the audience to recognize what is real and what is not.
Which parts of the events, characters or the feelings of the characters in this film are fictional or real? You can't say. The idea is to confront the audience with the fact of how easily we can make the wrong judgement about something or someone. To accentuate the documentary character of the film we have created the scenes through an improvisational approach, inspired by Mike Leigh’s method of working. Both cast and crew did not know exactly what they could expect next. Furthermore, the entire film was shot at exterior locations in Amsterdam, without any actual intervention in the real life and events on the scene. We might add a performance in a certain arena, but that was all.\
The reflection of the real-life experiences of the refugees in Dance Iranian Style was our main concern from the very start. The scriptwriter Nafiss Nia and I agreed from the beginning to try to keep it from becoming a sob story even though it's about the harsh reality of daily life for refugees. The mission was to tell a sad story without becoming too sentimental or somber. Another point is that the refugees are generally brave and strong people, mostly highly educated and having great pride. They do not want to be seen as pathetic, but just as human beings on the same level as everyone else. We wanted this film about a refugee to be as powerful as the refugees themselves generally are and with as much dignity as they have. This is how we decided to step onto a path in which fiction and documentary elements come together. We wanted the film not just to tell a story but also to offer something new or different by a somehow different means of approaching the form and storytelling. Using a mix of fictional and non-fictional elements to tell a single story is of course not new to many prominent Iranian filmmakers. This is why Nafiss and I, with our Iranian background, found our inspiration in the works of masterpieces of Iranian cinema like STILL LIFE by Sohrab Shahid-Saless, RUNNER by Amir Naderi, MARRIAGE OF THE BLESSED and A MOMENT OF INNOCENCE by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, CLOSE UP by Abbas Kiarostami and THE MIRROR by Jafar Panahi. Taking our lessons from these films, in Dance Iranian Style we have created situations which do not make it an easy task for the audience to recognize what is real and what is not.
Which parts of the events, characters or the feelings of the characters in this film are fictional or real? You can't say. The idea is to confront the audience with the fact of how easily we can make the wrong judgement about something or someone. To accentuate the documentary character of the film we have created the scenes through an improvisational approach, inspired by Mike Leigh’s method of working. Both cast and crew did not know exactly what they could expect next. Furthermore, the entire film was shot at exterior locations in Amsterdam, without any actual intervention in the real life and events on the scene. We might add a performance in a certain arena, but that was all.\