Locarno 2023: Critical Zone (Mantagheye bohrani) | Review
Taking place over a single night, Ali Ahmadzadeh unveils an underseen group of Iranian citizens looking to score and forget the world they inhabit in this year’s Golden Leopard recipient, Critical Zone.
The winner of the Golden Leopard was a bold and political decision. It was given to Ali Ahmadzadeh’s film, Critical Zone (Mantagheye bohrani), a road film about a drug dealer driving around the city of Tehran all in one night. Ali was pressured by Iranian government to back out of the Locarno Film Festival (The Chinese film West Border in the Cineaste del Presente was forcibly removed from the selection) but the festival stood their ground and was shown in the International Competition. It is essentially a road movie and like the great road movies of Iranian past, Ali shows a different and grimmer side. The underworld of drug dealing, its inhabitants, and how the society are pushed to these limits to remain sane in the oppressive country.
One of the more interesting openings that is void of any dialogue or music, but the natural sounds of traffic, beginning with following an ambulance in a tunnel, the camera leads us to a hidden road where groups of men congregate and separate individually with large duffel bags. We see them disperse into their car and are led to our protagonist, Amir, a bearded man with mid-length curly hair. Siri is heard throughout the film, guiding him on his journey to deliver and pic up drugs to and from his customers and clients. This journey shines a light on the nocturnal society of Tehran. Ali doesn’t tackle issues head on. He uses these customers and clients to depict the many years of an oppressive regime at the forefront of their society.
Ali also portrays the genders in critically amusing ways that reflect the society as many Iranian road movies do. There is a presumably queer man breaking down or a man hoping to score to drugs on credit, only to be rejected and berates the driver. The shift in film focuses on two women after, one who is fleeing the country and an airline stewardess who provides the most electric scenes of the film filled with paranoia and disdain. He then shifts to the younger generation from gender roles to an awfully sick boy who is having heavy withdrawals. He treats him with his own medicinal methods after a long night. This structure allows the openness of who and why Amir is visiting these people. It’s nothing new, but takes a different foray in Iranian cinema by observing why/how these people have gone to these lengths to stay afloat in this city.
Now the main question of this film is who is this man? Is he good? Is he bad? He is a small fish in the bigger pond of the drug trade, but he needs to do it because he cares about these forgotten people. He wants to provide top quality drugs and to never cheat out, but his morally complex situation leaves him almost soulless. This is where the film makes a grand statement on his job. Who is to provide the society with an escape during these tyrannical times. If he can provide a chemically enhanced stimulation to those in need of escaping the hellhole they’re living in, then who can fault him. It’s a bleak outlook, but necessary one because it turns the traditional Iranian road movie upside from day to night, unveiling the shadows that represent a darker, but authentic society.
