Yousef Saeedi is the hero of the film. Or rather, the anti-hero. He looks pretty goofy, but appearances can be deceptive. Yousef is not stupid; he’s a former student at university and also someone who doesn’t give up easily. The film is set against the background of the turbulent and allegedly fraudulent elections in 2009 in Iran. Many students were arrested or stopped their studies. Yousef also had to go looking for work. He chose the risky profession of ‘loan shark’, and we follow him during his enervating and also comic adventures. Abolfazl Jalili, who was Filmmaker in Focus in 1999 in Rotterdam, is a representative of the Iranian ‘new wave’ and he has remained faithful to this realistic school. As a documentary maker – always wielding the camera himself – he follows characters who are true to life. ‘Darvag’is the name of a small green frog that lives at the top of a tree waiting for rain, with which the filmmaker wants to say: one day it’s going to rain again.
