Careless Crime

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 started for real the year before with the burning of a movie theatre in Ābādān: the Cinema Rex. On the day of the fire, 19 August 1978, the Rex was showing one of the most popular films of recent make: Masoud Kimiai’s noir-actioner-turned-siege-huis clos, The Deer (1974). The venue was packed and hundreds died. Soon, other cinemas would burn – next, the nation.

With its surprising mix of fiction feature and essay, Careless Crime is one of modern cinema’s most surprising treatises on history and film – how one screening can shape collective memory. However, Shahram Mokri does not simply recreate the attack. Instead, he shows contemporary characters obsessing about the events: four men walk around like the alleged arsonists’ revenants looking for a cinema to burn, a group of young women arrange a special screening of The Deer at a magical spring, etc. What a ride!