TEHRAN – ‘Outcasts 3’, an Iranian comedy film mocking the candidates who stood against the president in the disputed 2009 election, has prompted an opposition boycott call which instead endorsed another film.
The controversial movie, the latest in Masoud Dehnamaki’s “Outcasts” trilogy, has attracted some 800,000 movie-goers and raked in 2.3 million dollars (1.6 million euros) since its release on March 17, according to media reports, despite having little luck with critics and opposition supporters. The movie criticises the reformist opposition candidates who lost to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June 2009 election.
As a year-old Facebook campaign against the movie gained momentum in recent weeks, opposition websites urged Iranians to boycott the movie and instead watch “Nader and Simin: A Separation” by prominent filmmaker Asghar Farhadi.
In September, Farhadi briefly lost a state permit to shoot the movie, after he defended fellow award-winning filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who has been sentenced to six years in jail for “anti-regime activities”. Farhadi’s gripping film, which won the Golden Bear top prize at the 61st Berlin film festival, was ultimately accepted by Iranian officials and even won several awards at the Fajr Film Festival in Tehran.
His movie is also getting a good response from audiences despite being shown on fewer screens, but trails “Outcasts 3” in box office receipts. Meanwhile, pirated copies of “Outcasts 3” are available on the Iranian black market amid calls for the movie’s boycott. Iran’s conservative media says it is an attempt to discourage people from flocking to theatres.
Dehnamaki has also condemned the move and accused his “so-called intellectual” critics of working on behalf of “cultural NATO” which does not wish to witness the success of “revolutionary forces” in cinema. In the first two movies of the trilogy, Dehnamaki tells the story of unemployed youth who end up fighting the Iraqi aggression in 1980, and are later captured as prisoners of war in Iran’s western neighbour. The movie also denounces the influence of money in social relations.
“Outcasts 2”, released in 2009, is currently the most successful film in Iran with earnings of nearly nine million dollars. Before embarking on filmmaking, Dehnamaki was in charge of the Islamist Chalamcheh newspaper in the 1990s before the daily was banned for accusing then president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani of fostering the emergence a new class of rich.
