The creators of “Dwar” hope to attract the general audience

Charso Press: The movie “Dwar” as the first movie of Meisham Hassanzadeh was recently released in the art and experience group. This movie, which was made in the city of Mashhad, tells the story of a young man who is diagnosed with dementia, and the filmmaker tries to convey the inner thoughts and mental events of a person suffering from this disease to the audience by narrating the story of this young man.

With Meisham Hassanzadeh We had a conversation about the movie “Dementia”, which you can read below:

Considering that we are in the last days of the year and the movie “Dwar” has just been released, how do you evaluate the conditions of the release and were you satisfied with the reception so far?

Screening in March has its own problems, but the art and experience group provides support that can support the screening conditions for certain films that have a new word in the genre, and this type of support is not available in any other department other than the art and experience group. Iran does not exist.

Since the film “Dwar” has a non-linear narrative, it is probably a difficult work for the general audience, because the Iranian audience prefers a simple and linear narrative, and this can be clearly seen from the sales of movies in Iran. However, in my opinion; Until today, the sales of “Dwar” have been satisfactory and good, and we had a good opening in Charso cinema, which was very surprising to me, and considering the economic problems that our society is facing, this reception was not expected.

I was born in Mashhad, and this film was shot in this city, and we had a screening in this city, and the Howeiza cinema was almost full, and we even had a ticket office, so this reception was an interesting and happy event for me.

So, considering the topic and structure of the film, you didn’t consider attracting the general audience from the beginning?

From the beginning, what I had in mind was attending festivals. In addition to telling a different story, “Dwar” has a musician as its main character, and Jahan also follows a musician who has problems with his fiancee and constantly compares himself to Freddie Mercury. This character in itself is not a character that can be seen in many examples in the society and people may not be able to relate to it in some cases.

Why did you choose Freddie Mercury as the role model and character that your main character compares himself to?

I am always looking for cultural similarities. In my opinion, someone who was born in Mashhad can have many cultural similarities with someone who was born in Spain. There are more.

We know that Freddie Mercury as a successful musician and singer suffered from AIDS in his youth and lost his life, and the main character of this film has dementia or amnesia under the age of 40, and he is unable to achieve his goals in the field of music. has encountered problems. For this reason, it seems reasonable to me that Milad compares his birthday with Freddie Mercury.

Dementia disease or dementia and forgetfulness mostly happen to people in old age and in this movie your character is under 40 years old. What research did you have about this disease?

The idea of ​​the movie “Dwar” came to my mind when I was reading a foreign article about dementia. In this article, he wrote that Alzheimer’s disease is not only related to old people, and in rare cases, it has been seen that people under the age of 40 are also affected by this disease, and this happens in the modern world due to the excessive use of communication devices. Social media such as mobile phones have increased, and people may suffer from brain degeneration at a young age.

After reading this article, which was very interesting to me, I consulted several doctors and through these doctors I was able to communicate and talk with several people who are suffering from this disease and I heard things that were very strange to me, for example, a family member One of these people, who was suffering from dementia, said that one day he had gone out for shopping and had trouble returning home and did not know how to get home. In fact, this disease also exists for people at a young age, but it is very rare.

Are you influenced by a movie like “Memento” in making this movie?

I’m not one of those filmmakers to say that I haven’t seen this movie at all or at all. Definitely, watching the movie “Memento” had an impact on me and I got influences from this work, but “Dwar” cannot be considered an adaptation and it is a completely independent work. I have my own point of view in this film, but I think many filmmakers today are influenced by great filmmakers like Christopher Nolan.

Although the idea of ​​this film is close to “Memento” in terms of payment, did you try to distance yourself from storytelling and mostly followed the inner space of the character and went towards the philosophy of mind?

It was exactly my intention to follow another look. Basically, the choice of a character whose work is music separates the film from Nolan’s work. Choosing a person with the characteristic that music works and has Alzheimer’s is a bit against what the doctors say, because they say that it is better to go to music to avoid Alzheimer’s, and of course there is also a disease that only musicians suffer from, and this is also what I found in my research. I found it interesting.

In “Dwar” we meet Milad and he always has in mind that something big will happen to him in the field of music, and for this concern I turned to mentalism, which was very attractive to me. On the other hand, the narrator of the story “Dwar” is an unreliable narrator whose information cannot be trusted, and the audience always doubts the narrator’s statements, and with this choice, I tried to bring the audience closer to the confusion and mental atmosphere of the main character of my film. In fact, the audience’s doubt about the events in the film, in my opinion, can create the character’s mental space for the viewer.

Despite the choice of this complex idea, did you pay attention to attracting the attention of the general audience?

Basically, going for such an idea that both the narrative is non-linear and the narrator of the film is unreliable seems a bit scary. In fact, as this idea can be attractive for some audiences, it may be confusing for many audiences and the audience will follow the film until the end of the story to see if what Milad is doing is right or not; This incident is also scary for the filmmaker.

Of course, I must emphasize that I was trying to make a film that would be welcomed by the general audience, and for that reason, I took this issue into consideration during editing. In fact, although success in festivals was important to me, I had the general audience in mind and did not just make my film for festivals. For this reason, I changed the structure of the film a little in the editing, and finally we came to a version that, fortunately, I think is a different work, and at the same time, it is worth watching at least once.

Why has “Dwar” been screened with an age rating of minus 15?

To be honest, this age classification was very strange for me too, but friends in the Ministry of Guidance saw it as appropriate, and I think the reason for this classification is related to issues such as violence in the film.

You made the movie “Dwar” in the city of Mashhad with actors who are not famous. Is there a dramatic reason for choosing the city of Mashhad?

One of the attractions of the film was that we made it in Mashhad. Making a work in a city other than Tehran with actors who are not very famous has its own challenges and on the other hand, it can be a good way for the director. The city of Mashhad has both a high human potential and a good geographical potential, and the filmmaker can refer to locations that have not been seen in other films, and this can help to make the images unique, but on the other hand, there may be more favorable conditions for filmmaking in Tehran. It does not exist in Mashhad and other cities.

In my opinion, our managers should be confident that films with international standards can be made in cities other than Tehran. Personally, I want my colleagues to pursue new ideas and implement those ideas, contrary to the classical view that may exist in the cities. This new and different look that goes to specific subjects can even help the cinema of our city.