Sundance experience day 1: “Fat Shaker”

Fat Shaker is a New Frontier film. (New Frontier features films that  “expand, experiment with, and explode traditional narrative storytelling.”  Mohammad Shirvani is the Director and Screenwriter of this Iranian film produced in 2012.  The film was in color, in English/Farsi/Dari with English subtitles.

The film was described as “An obese father and his handsome, deaf son share extraordinary experiences in Tehran.  Then a beautiful young woman upsets the balance of their relationship, forcing them to renegotiate their position with each other and the world around them.”  The evolution of their relationship seems to parallel the push and pull between the old beliefs and Iranian regime and the will of the young.  The old was initially portrayed by a primitive healing practice involving small drinking glasses suctioned to the father’s back and the use of leaches.  The evolution was dramatized and lead by young Iranian women in Western dress, riding in cars and flirting with the son.  A scene depicting the crumbling of the old showed the father being questioned by authority figures during which the glasses began falling off his back and smashing on the floor.  The film ended with a robed, scarved woman saying it will just take one push.

The Director/Screenwriter was available for the Q&A and spoke through an interpreter.

It was a very well done film but not necessarily easy to view.

Here is a link to information about Fat Shaker in the Sundance Film Festival Film Guide: Click here.