Synopsis

Late-shift taxi driver Ali works the “mean streets” of Tehran and in the process he encounters a wide variety of people. The taciturn, disconsolate man meets the owner of the last traditional café in the city, Denis, and the lovely Leila, both of whom start to play an important role among his customers.

Ali gets closer to the secretive young woman due to their similar personalities and deep internal isolation. While waiting for an anticipated earthquake to happen, the only apocalypse to shake his deliberately enclosed world is the truth about his love. Behind banal conversations full of unfinished sentences, the protagonists’ pasts betray deep traumas which have deflected them from their original paths in life.... With a nod to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), debut director Fardin Saheb Zamani’s melancholy, disquieting drama tells of alienation and the various roles which people assign themselves and others.

Cast:  Ali Mosafa, Leila Hatami, Mahtab Keramati








Colour, 35 mm
Iran, 2010, 92 min
WP – World premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition
Director:  Fardin Saheb Zamani
Screenplay:  Fardin Saheb Zamani
Dir. of Photography:  Houman Behmanesh
Music:  Amir-Ali Vajed Samiei
Designer:  Kamyab Amin Ashayeri
Editor:  Fardin Saheb Zamani
Producer:  Manijeh Hekmat
Production:  Bamdad Film
Coproduction:  Documentary & Experimental Film Center
Sales:  Iranian Independents
Link: Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

*****

Bottom Line: Lack of words, action and
suspense diminish tale of imminent
earthquake.

KARLOVY VARY, Czech Republic -- Iranian filmmaker Fardin Saheb Zamani's film about a taxi-driver's ordinary encounters in the 10 days before a predicted earthquake in Tehran has the beguiling title "There Are Things You Don't Know" ("Chiz-haie hast keh nemidani")

By the time it's over, however, there will be even more things you don't know, including the point of the movie. Using a mostly static camera and a central character who barely utters a word, it's an impenetrable and dull exercise entirely lacking the curiosity urged by the title phrase.  -- Read the rest of the review by Ray Bennett, July 10, 2010 at Hollywood Reporter