With his joyful diaspora rom-com, Faran Moradi wants to widen the lens of Iranian cinema

Rising Stars is a monthly column by Radheyan Simonpillai profiling a new generation of Canadian screen stars making their mark in front of and behind the camera.

Toronto is a cultural potpourri where you can pick up an authentic shawarma on your way to a King West art gallery while appreciating the striking resemblance between the CN Tower and a hookah pipe. That's the setting for Faran Moradi's Tehranto, a rom-com deeply embedded in the local Iranian community that feeds off the distinct and authentic Toronto vibe. But, funny enough, the film, which began as speculative fiction, wasn't meant to be set in Toronto at all. 

The Iranian Canadian filmmaker initially wanted to set his love story — about a guy and a girl who each have very different relationships to their cultural identity — in an alternate modern-day Iran. In this imagined place, the 1979 revolution never happened, and society progressed as it would have had the authoritarian regime not taken over. The rom-com would have been set in an Iran where women can let their hair out in public without facing state-sanctioned violence and filmmakers wouldn't be jailed for making films that bat a critical eye at the regime (more on that later).

But a friend helped Moradi realize his concept was adding unnecessary complications to a simple but culturally loaded romance. If he needed an alternative to Tehran, free from the Islamic regime's oppressive structures and influence, he could just look at Toronto and its suburbs, where the immigrant Persian community is thriving.

"If you drive past Yonge and Steeles, all the supermarket signs are in Farsi," says Moradi on a Zoom call with CBC Arts, explaining why transplanting his concept to Canada was only natural.

The filmmaker is speaking from his midtown apartment, which is nestled between the CN Tower and the aforementioned Persian neighbourhoods further north dubbed Tehranto. Behind Moradi are empty film reels hanging on the walls, a bulky projector decorating a shelf and an antique-looking desk that must have been around since the 80s. It's like his interior decorator was going for "time capsule chic" — fitting for a filmmaker who writes characters maintaining a tight grip on their pasts.

Tehranto, which is now available digitally, tells the story of young people whose attitudes toward Persian culture are shaped by whether they immigrated before or after the revolution. Badi (Sammy Azero) lived through the Islamic Republic and still holds his Iranian community and culture dear as he resides in Toronto, while Sharon (Mo Zeighami) was born in Canada to parents who introduce themselves as "more Parisian than Persian." Badi sees Sharon as white-washed, and she sees him as a FOB (fresh off the boat).

You don't have to be Persian to be familiar with this very universal tension among diasporas. Those from a particular community who are among the first to immigrate often face the most racism, which makes them more eager to shed their cultural identity so that they can adapt. That tends to foster a sense of self-hatred and antagonism toward newer immigrants who maintain a stronger attachment to home within a more established expat community.

Moradi, who was born in Canada, doesn't actually subscribe to such binary ways of looking at the diaspora. "We build the stereotypes for the two of them at the beginning of the film," he explains. "The second half of the film is all about breaking those stereotypes down and showing there's complexity around why people are the way that they are."

The film, he says, was partly born from his own experiences not feeling Iranian enough for some and not Canadian enough for others. Moradi cites W.E.B. DuBois's idea of "double consciousness" when describing the common struggle to reconcile these two identities. Badi and Sharon are practically the opposing consciousness of a diaspora identity; Moradi tries to reconcile them in Tehranto. 

Moradi says he was inspired to make his joyous feature debut after speaking to other Persians in Canada about Iranian cinema and its somewhat miserabilist tendencies. These viewers weren't into watching internationally celebrated downers like Asghar Farhadi's Oscar-winning The Salesman.

"There's this whole group of people who feel like their sorrows are being exploited on the screen," says Moradi. "So I realized we need to have a movie that reflects this other side of who we are — that reflects the warmth and the laughter and the love that I grew up with. That's probably much more reflective of who we are."

Representing his community is a weighty and complicated concern for Moradi, especially since there are such limited opportunities for Iranians to tell their stories. In Canada, Moradi, Sada Foroughi (Ava) and Jasmin Mozaffari (Firecrackers) are among the very few who have been able to direct narrative features.

The situation is even more dire in Iran, where state censorship restricts what stories get told. Asghar Farhadi can win Oscars for his social melodramas because he strategically refuses to call out the issues and hold the government accountable. Meanwhile, a much more confrontational and critical filmmaker like Jafar Panahi is serially persecuted by his country. The filmmaker behind Offside, This Is Not A Film and Taxi has been operating under a filmmaking ban for more than a decade and was just recently jailed for months after he protested the imprisonment of fellow filmmakers.

Moradi expresses concerns that while a filmmaker like Panahi is wrongfully imprisoned for making films that are critical of Iran's oppressive regime, Farhadi is platformed and rewarded by the international community. "By continuously giving space to the filmmakers that almost toe the party line," says Moradi, "it gives the regime an opportunity to flex that on directors who don't."

Those concerns are coming to a head as women are protesting for their rights in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini. What filmmakers feel safe documenting these stories?

Moradi is currently being inundated with messages from filmmakers in Iran who want to send him scripts after catching his appearance on the popular Persian late-night talk show A Few Saturdays with Sina, which is shot in the U.K., played to expats across the world and illegally streamed on satellite by those in Iran. These filmmakers are hoping Moradi can tell the stories they can't get off the ground at home. He says they're just giving away their scripts, not expecting anything in return, so that their voices can be heard.

"Iranians, we have this thing called taarof," says Moradi — a custom that can be seen in small gestures like holding the door for others or insisting that your guest eats more than you. "The idea of taarof is self-sacrifice for the advancement of others."

"That also extends to filmmaking," he continues, explaining that these young Iranian filmmakers are willing to give away their stories with the same generosity, thinking little of their own advancement. He's wary that they will be taken advantage of by a much more individualistic Western culture.

"You have one culture that's like, 'No, please, you first, take everything.' And another culture is like, 'I need to take this so that I can get ahead.' You're going to have one group of filmmakers taking advantage of the stories of the other and getting ahead."

Moradi explains that he's been working up a response to these filmmakers, expressing his reluctance to try to tell stories that aren't his to tell. He says he doesn't want to take their offers because it would essentially mean he's extracting the cultural wealth out of their country and making a profit that they won't see. 

"Things are changing in Iran right now," Moradi says. He's counting on the people to lead the way to an alternative Iran where their voices will be heard. "We're going to need stories to talk about the culture, and what happened."