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Iranian Director on ‘Sunshine Express,’ Shakespeare, Westerns, and the Dangers of Role-Playing

All aboard the Sunshine Express! Destination: Hermia! Iranian director, choreographer, and video artist Amirali Navaee’s debut feature film, which gets its world premiere at the Rotterdam International Film Festival (IFFR) this week, sends characters on a journey reminiscent of reality TV shows with a big slice of Kafkaesque surrealism.

Participants board a fake train going to a fictional paradise on the island of Hermia to win a cash prize in a role-playing game. To win, they must remain in character and fulfill any tasks assigned to them. But as the game begins, some contestants begin to suspect that it is more than it seems.

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The Rotterdam film festival‘s website describes the movie as “a sumptuous allegory, examining how totalitarian systems sustain themselves through collective complicity … as contestants navigate a world where the notion of choice is an illusion and coercion is not always imposed by force, but through psychological and emotional manipulation.”

Check out a trailer for Sunshine Express, filmed in Tehran, below.

‘Sunshine Express’

Navaee, born in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq war, which has shaped his artistic vision, talked to THR‘s Georg Szalai about how the film is a commentary on today’s world, beyond Iran, why humans always look for greener pastures, such thinkers as Mahatma Gandhi and Vaclav Havel, and the benefits and risks of conformity.

What inspired the idea for your film and to what degree is the story you tell about your home or more universal?

It’s not only about the situation in my hometown or region or country. It’s about something that I always see as a traveler. I was a dancer, and then I became a choreographer. I sing and I travel a lot for the performing arts. So I’ve seen a lot of people everywhere, all around the world, mostly people in the cultural world. I talk to everyone. So for me, it was about why does everyone always think the grass is greener on the other side. It’s just crazy. Nobody really likes the place where he belongs.

When the situation is harsher, people, of course, look to other parts of the planet more. For example, I was raised during the war between Iran and Iraq, so there were always bombs. And a cassette of Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen or The Bee Gees meant a lot to us. I knew all of Michael Jackson’s music by heart when I was a kid, and I became a trash metal singer when I was 16. It was something from (over) there, somewhere but you don’t know where it is.

I came to the West. I thought this was my dreamland. I could dance here, and nobody asked me why. And then I figured out, “Oh, I miss a lot of things back in my homeland.” So where is home at the end of the day? Nobody knows. It’s just something that you imagine, a dreamland somewhere, a utopia.

How do you see role-playing as a reflection on life?

There is this ignorance among human beings. People are doing fine. We have skyscrapers, modern cars, metros, and trams. But we kill each other like crazy. People are dying from cold, and it’s just that we don’t share. People are going for jobs and filling out applications. And totalitarian countries say to their inhabitants, “This is your role” so that they can use their complicity to continue. But also in, let’s say, liberated countries people are just remaining in their roles, and they are not really living a happy life because they have to really (work as a part of) the system to earn money and get holidays, which means a lot to them. So, these are all roles that are given to us.

There are really few people who get out of these roles and choose something else where they are not just imitating others. It takes a lot of courage. When you’re not a conformist, it’s scary because there’s nobody in front of you who is leading you, and you have to choose for yourself. But when somebody is leading you, you have a social role.

I read this book called The Power of the Powerless by Vaclav Havel. It is such a fantastic book, and he talks about roles as well as ideology. And I was like, “Wow, this is exactly the way I see the world.”

‘Sunshine Express’ Courtesy of International Film Festival Rotterdam

Different characters in the movie adjust to their assigned roles and the whole situation differently. Do you see any of them as doing better than others or did you judge them in any sense?

It’s a very interesting question because this (came up) during the rehearsals. I didn’t write any good or bad into the script but the actors were asking me about this all the time. They were like: “If this person is winning, does that mean (they) are a bad person?” I said “Not really,” because I cannot really say anyone is a bad person. I can say someone sticks to a goal and is a conformist but I cannot really complain about that person. There is a person who is opposing the system who gets kicked out of the train immediately. But then the last ones remaining are those who can trick others a little bit and deceive others because they want to win, they become part of the system.

Asghar Farhadi, our Iranian director, once said a very beautiful sentence. He said: “It’s not a matter of good and bad anymore. It’s a matter of good and better.” He said that instead of “bad and worse.” He said “good and better,” which really made me think because we’re struggling to be good.

I also want to ask you about the name of the promised land in Sunshine Express, which is called Hermia. What’s the significance of that name?

It’s a Shakespearean word. It’s the name of the character in A Midsummer Night’s Dream who decides to leave her family and go with this man she likes to another city where her aunt lives. I love that story, and I love that character, and I thought maybe it’s a good name for utopia.

How did you come up with the title Sunshine Express?

There is this fakeness of the whole film. The whole idea was to make it as fake as possible. Because when I grew up during the war, watching bombs falling seemed so fake. But it’s truthful when they hit the ground. So I was looking for a fake name, a parody. I just wanted an ironic name. And I like these old western posters where you have a train and the sun above it and then you have all the names of the characters. I thought maybe Sun Train. And then I thought Sunshine Express is the name, though nothing is sunny about it. Trains that are promised to get to this destination are an allegory of a system.

To what degree did you intend to make the film a commentary on today’s world?

It IS a commentary on today’s time. You look at Trump, you look at all these people around the world who are just promising something by eliminating something else, by eliminating people. It’s crazy! They promise something that is not visible, and they say, “Okay, we’re going to reach this and that and that.” You see all of these leaders around the world these days doing that. All these promises that all these leaders are making to people are absolutely unreachable because hatred cannot be the path. My film shows people wanting to eliminate each other, to get rid of each other in order to be the one who gets there.

‘Sunshine Express’ Courtesy of International Film Festival Rotterdam

You might call me a pessimist. But everybody who knows me calls me an optimist because they laugh with me, they enjoy time with me. But I remember watching a documentary about Gandhi, and he said once, “I’m a pessimist, but an optimist in will.” I really liked that.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

I have to mention Sina Sharbafi, my producer, and my editor Rouzbeh Moharrer who worked day and night. Without these two, I don’t think this film would have happened. And all the crew (and actors) who helped make it happen. It’s just amazing how everybody got into this project with their whole hearts. I really can’t say it is my film. I say it’s our film. Really,

Also, I’m a film nerd. I won’t call myself a cinephile but a film nerd. I think artistic cinema still exists. It takes a lot of guts to make an independent artistic film because it takes all your life away. But when it gets finished and you can talk about it with people like you … that makes me think it’s worth it. Let’s do the next one!

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