A plucky 14-year-old boy on the cusp of manhood takes the audience on a frightening trip back to Iran in the 1980’s, when his native city of Abadan, the country’s’s largest port city, falls under attack in the long war of attrition with Iraq. It was a war in which some 1.5 million lives were lost, most of them civilians. Taking full advantage of animation and its ability to recreate explosions, missiles and warfare as well as dramatic scenes of masses, filmmaker Sepideh Farsi chooses a classic storytelling idiom for The Siren (La sirène) centered around young Omid, through whose eyes we see the horrors of a city under siege. This beautifully made French production with numerous European coproducers taking part bowed in Berlin as the opening film of the Panorama section; its blend of human interest and history should strike interest in many fests sensitive to the current Iranian upheaval.
With its commercial port and huge oil refineries surrounded by desert and palm trees, the southern city of Abadan makes a riveting backdrop to the story of a boy forced to grow up alone, with echoes of Amir Naderi’s masterpiece The Runner and Nasser Taghvi’s classic Captain Korshid, which is cited in the film. In a well-chosen opening scene, no less affecting for being a genre chestnut, Omid and his friends are playing soccer in an empty field. Behind them rise the smoking complex of the oil refineries, which at that time were the largest in Iran and which exude their own eerie beauty. These innocents at play are totally unaware of the mortal danger about to befall them, as a series of Iraqi missiles streak through the sky and hone in on the refinery. They explode upon impact as the terrified boys look on.
The screenplay by Javal Djavahery also follows a classic, almost folkloristic path that underscores it is adult subject matter but with appeal aimed at teenage audiences. Hurrying back home, Omid finds his brother Abed has hastily joined the army, while his mother hurries to leave town with his two younger siblings. Omid opts to stay behind with his aged grandfather, who refuses to leave his home, and his beloved rooster Shir-Khan, who the boy is training for cock fights. This introduces a major theme in the film: Is war necessary? Do people have to fight, or are they provoked by their leaders into senselessly sacrificing their lives? These are strong ideas when coupled with photographs of the Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian revolution, and Iraqi boss Saddam Hussein.
The Siren builds the character of Omid through a series of encounters with those brave or foolhardy souls who refused evacuation. Each seems to live in a different world of his or her own, depicting the human and cultural richness of Abadan before the war but after the Islamic revolution. So we meet the famous diva Elaheh, who has been forbidden to sing after the revolution, and her bold daughter Pari, a girl unafraid of removing her headscarf when necessary; a nostalgic photographer; a pair of Armenian clerics guarding a precious icon of the Virgin Mary; even the half-mad engineer who built the oil refinery, which he can see burning in flames from his residence in an unfinished apartment building. A sinister atmosphere of anguish, death and entrapment engulfs them as Iraqi forces continue to bombard the city and encircle it. But this entrapment is also the fault of the residents themselves, who stubbornly refuse to leave a place of sure death. The last part of the film describes Omid’s rebellion and his determination to live, a message of hope for younger viewers in particular.
Director: Sepideh Farsi
Screenplay: Javal Djavahery
Animation, production design: Zaven Najjar
Producer: Sébastien Onomo
Executive producers: Sébastien Onomo, Annemie Degryse, David Grumbach, Vanessa Ciszewski
Editing: Isabelle Manquillet, Grégoire Sivan
Music: Erik Truffaz
Sound design: Pierre Vedovato, Jeroen Truijens
Production companies: Les Films d’Ici (France) in coproduction with Trickstudio Lutterbeck (Cologne), Special Touch Studios (Marseille), Rêves d’Eau productions (Bourg-et-Comin), Amopix (Strasbourg), Les Fées Spéciales (Montpellier), Lunanime (Gent), Katuh Studio, (Berlin), BAC Cinema (Luxembourg)
World sales: Wild Bunch International
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama)
In Farsi
100 minutes
