Iranian director Mohsen Amiryousefi (Fire Keeper, Lovely Trashes) discusses his past work and career with none other than the Angel of Death in his new film, The Banning Curse (Nefrin-e Toghif), a piece of  cinematic autofiction about the highs and lows of radical filmmaking,  as the BFI London Film Festival puts it.

The film, written and directed by the auteur, will world premiere in the program of the 70th edition of the festival on Wednesday. The director and his editor, Kamy Saffari, saw the U.K. reject their visa applications, according to a representative, so they won't be able to travel to London to experience the audience reaction to the film. But Amiryousefi is used to facing all sorts of hurdles, which is just what his new film is about.

 After the critical success of his first film at Cannes [where the black comedy Bitter Dream won a Golden Camera for best first feature film special mention], Amiryousefi returned to Iran to find it banned by state authorities,  teases a synopsis of his new film on the LFF website.  It's a pattern that continued through his entire career, which the seasoned director looks back on in this imaginative, satirical portrait. A balance of biography and constructed fiction, the filmmaker's own life and Iran's turbulent political, social and cultural history are entwined via a rich trove of archive footage. 

Film history is also a recurring theme in the film. A trailer for The Banning Curse, which you can watch below, mentions a legendary Iranian actor, for example, while the film also mentions the works of such famous directors as Federico Fellini and Christopher Nolan.

By Zoom and via an interpreter, Amiryousefi talked to THR about The Banning Curse and its creation.

The film was shot indoors without shooting permits and without the need for a big budget.  It was not a very complicated thing for us, as it is something that I and many other filmmakers in Iran have done before,  the director shares with THR via his translator.  But the main point that was different was that I was in front of the camera this time. That was my first experience [actin
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