The New Yorker:

The Iranian director Mani Haghighi scrutinizes daily life in Tehran by way of supernatural events and inspired images.

By Richard Brody

Iranian cinema has risen to international prominence in recent decades, largely through the meticulous realism of such directors as Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi, who probe ordinary people’s lives in passionate detail. Mani Haghighi is somewhat different. Now in his fifties and one of Iran’s most distinguished and distinctive filmmakers, he’s a specialist in tales of fantasy, imagination, and the supernatural. His excellent 2018 film “Pig” is the story of a serial killer who targets filmmakers and of the wild imaginings of a filmmaker who fears becoming the next victim. Yet his work is closer in intent to that of his realist peers than appearances would suggest. Like them, he is intent on anatomizing the essence of daily life in Iran—and the inner and outer life make equal claims on his attention. Haghighi’s latest film, “Subtraction,” is as fantastical as “Pig” and even finer, because its premise, at once simpler and more radical, determines the movie’s repertory of images with seemingly magnetic power.

“Subtraction” is screening this Friday, at IFC Center, in this year’s edition of the Iranian Film Festival; moreover, Haghighi will be on hand for a Q. & A. What’s dismaying, however, is that the film has not yet had a proper release in the U.S. It premièred back in 2022, at the Toronto International Film Festival, but has since been utterly overlooked by prominent American showcases, including the New York Film Festival, Sundance, and the “First Look” series at the Museum of the Moving Image. “Subtraction” is, quite simply, one of the best I’ve seen in a while. If it had been released here in 2023, as it clearly should have been, it would have been in my list of top movies from last year.

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