Arta Barzanji

Arta Barzanji is a London-based Iranian filmmaker, critic and lecturer. His current film project is a feature-length documentary titled Unfinished: Kamran Shirdel. Arta is an alumnus of the critic programmes at the Locarno and Ghent film festivals and has written for MUBI Notebook, Outskirts, and Photogėnie, among other outlets.  

Introduction à ‘Serge Daney et la promesse du cinéma’

Arta Barzanji, Gerard-Jan Claes, 2025
ARTICLE
25.06.2025
FR EN

À peine quelques mois avant sa mort, en réponse à une question de Régis Debray sur « les images qui vous ont regardé » lorsqu’il était enfant, Daney est catégorique : « [L]a première image qui a compté pour moi, et l’image presque définitive, ce n’est pas une image de cinéma, c’est l’atlas de géographie . » Enfant, il était en effet captivé par les cartes du monde, représentant un univers bien plus vaste que le milieu parisien borné d’après-guerre dans lequel il grandissait. Pour Daney, elles portaient la promesse de devenir « citoyen du monde » — une promesse qu’il estimait avoir largement réalisée à travers sa vie dans le cinéma, déclarant à Debray : « J’en ai vécu de cette carte du monde . »

Introduction to ‘Serge Daney and the Promise of Cinema’

Arta Barzanji, Gerard-Jan Claes, 2025
ARTICLE
25.06.2025
FR EN

Just months before his death, in response to a question of Régis Debray about the images “that looked at you when you were a child”, Daney was unequivocal: “the first image that counted for me, almost the definitive image, wasn’t a cinema image, it was the geography atlas”. As a child, he was indeed captivated by world maps, suggesting a universe far vaster than the narrow confines of his post-war Parisian surroundings. For Daney, they held the promise of becoming “a citizen of the world” — a promise he later believed he had largely fulfilled through his life in cinema, telling Debray: “I’ve lived from that world map”.

Eduardo Williams on The Human Surge 3 (2023)

Alonso Aguilar Candanedo, Arta Barzanji, Abraham Villa Figueroa, 2024
CONVERSATION
07.02.2024
EN

In the playful “sequel” to his 2017 festival breakthrough, The Human Surge, Williams tackles the erratic mechanisms of virtual-reality technology through the lucid hyper-reality of a group of characters ranging from different latitudes in the so-called Global South. Captured entirely with a 360-degree lens that’s normally reserved for VR but projected on a traditional cinema screen, the film follows three groups of friends from Taiwan, Peru and Sri Lanka who meet, converse and traverse through space and time as the film helps transport them across borders through the magic of cinema.