Synopsis

For forty years, Esfandiar has been unconcernedly preparing corpses for the journey to their final resting place. One day, whilst preparing a burial service, he's taken ill. Might he too be mortal?

Illustrating both the diversity of current Iranian filmmaking and the loosening ties of State censorship, this scabrous black comedy takes a theme straight out of Dickens' A Christmas Carol - visited by the angel of death, a spectacularly bad-tempered funeral director attempts to make amends to his many enemies and victims, before his own imminent demise - and turns it into a meditation on mortality and a satire on the intractability of human nature, since Mr Esfandier (our supposed hero) is too old and too stubborn to ever quite repent.

Funny and quietly subversive, it's another welcome envoy from an extraordinarily vital film culture.-- IMDb



Cast: Yadollah Anvari, Abbas Esfandiari, Delbar Ghasri, Mohsen Rahimi, Safar-Ali Safari

Produced by: Mohsen Amiryoussefi, Rouhollah Baradari
Music by: Peyman Yazdanian     
Cinematography by: Bayram Fazli     
Editing by: Mohsen Amiryoussef


In terms of narrative structure, A Bitter Dream is a different and avant-garde film in Iranian cinema, and in it, Amiryousefi addresses the gap between modernity and tradition in Iranian society with a humorous approach.

A Bitter Dream had a successful presence at international festivals and was noticed by international critics. The film was first screened in the Directors’ Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival in 2004 and, in addition to receiving the Golden Eye Award in this section, was also nominated for the Cannes Camera d'Or. A Bitter Dream was then screened at more than forty international festivals and won awards such as the Golden Alexander Award at the Thessaloniki Film Festival and the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) Award. However, despite its global success, it failed to receive a screening license from the Iranian Ministry of Cultural Affairs and was not publicly screened until 2015, only in some cinema circles.

An upbeat, light hearted comedy about death set in a graveyard

This is a fantastic, Monty-Pytonesque comedy from the Iranian cinema. The director is a former mathematician, which is probably why everything in the movie fits so well together. The casting is brilliant, the leading character bears an uncanny resemblance to the angel of death. And it certainly takes a mathematician to make a comedy about grave yards, washing dead bodies, and dying itself. The jokes come in many layers, some probably hidden from non-Iranian viewers, for example, every time you see the clergyman, he's either being given money, or is literally sitting in the middle of a pool of money. The credits at the end of the movie are not translated properly either, here the director makes one last joke by putting a RIP or equivalent after all names, and gives special thanks to all graveyard personnel, which includes the dead people. Overall, it's an unusually upbeat movie from a cinema that specializes is somber, dark movies. --IMDb