Berlinale 2026: Cesarean Weekend (dir. Mohammad Shirvani) | Review

The latest film from Iranian director Mohammad Shirvani, Caesarean Weekend, premiered in the Forum section of this year’s Berlinale. Set over a weekend in a secluded seaside villa in northern Iran, we follow a group of family and friends in what unfolds as an exploration of generational tension, masculinity, desire, privilege and inherited trauma in contemporary Iran.

Shirvani works within Iran’s long cinematic tradition of resistance to state repression, and in the context of the country’s recent uprisings, the screening carried clear political weight. Once again Shirvani breaks cultural taboos with scenes of physical intimacy filmed inside Iran depict images unseen on domestic screens since the 1979 revolution.

Formally, Caesarean Weekend continues Shirvani’s opus of non-narrative, experimental cinema. Shot on handheld cameras, the film prioritises atmosphere over plot, inviting the audience to sit with the characters rather than follow a clear storyline. The blurred line between actors and non-actors, documentary and fiction, heightens this sense of intimacy.

However, perhaps because of this non-linear approach, and due to certain issues with the grammar in the subtitles, I often found the film difficult to grasp. Despite fully recognising its political significance, I can’t say this was a film I particularly enjoyed watching. The fractured editing, murky palette and drifting structure left me struggling to follow the characters, with little emotional thread or narrative structure to hold onto.

The political and social context, however, is unmistakable. On the surface, the film presents a bourgeois bubble where women dance unveiled, drugs are consumed (relatively) openly and music blares — acts unremarkable in most countries, but an obviously direct rejection of the norms of the Iranian regime.

Rather than stage overtly political debates about the taboos and governance of Iran, however, Shirvani exposes tension through generational conflict. The younger men drift toward nihilism while their fathers are embittered with regret, consumed by thoughts of exile and the compromises they have made to survive. Their arguments about culture, responsibility, masculinity and failure work as family disputes as well as allegories for a nation caught between past ideals and present disillusion.

What makes the film challenging — and, for me, a little alienating — was its refusal to guide the viewer. Scenes slide into one another without clear markers, relationships remain ambiguous, tenderness sits uneasily beside cruelty or absurdity. Whilst this opacity was surely deliberate – possibly an attempt to render contemporary Iran as a disorienting psychological space rather than a coherent narrative – I didn’t find that this translated into emotional connection.

Still, certain elements were powerful – the constant awareness of surveillance and potential raids, the uneasy privilege of the family represented, and certain shots of the Iranian countryside which were nothing less than breathtaking. 

I left the screening unsure about Caesarean Weekend, and unsure whether that uncertainty was the point… Caesarean Weekend feels politically significant and formally ambitious, but for me it remained more an intellectual puzzle than an emotional experience.

Our team is on the ground at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, running from February 12th to 22nd, 2026.