A Small Miracle

Faraz Fesharaki on Was hast du gestern geträumt, Parajanov? (2024)

Faraz Fesharaki, originally from Iran, relocated to Berlin in 2012 to attend the German Film and Television Academy. He graduated as a cinematographer with What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, a film by Alexandre Koberidze that premiered in the Berlinale Competition in 2021. While working as a cinematographer, Fesharaki also developed a trajectory as a filmmaker. His debut feature-length film as a director, Was hast du gestern geträumt, Parajanov? was presented at the recent Berlinale Forum and has an unusual genesis. Initially, the project started as a more traditionally written, produced, and shot fiction film, based on a trip his father undertook. However, Fesharaki ultimately decided to take a different approach after being dissatisfied with the obtained material.

Since he was living in Berlin, he began recording his Skype conversations with his parents, Mitra and Hassan, and other family members at an early stage. When asked why he saved them, he explained that these recordings were like diaries to him – he found himself too lazy to write them down and felt that videos were a more suitable way to preserve these memories. After deciding to move away from his initial film project, Fesharaki began editing this footage without a clear direction, uncertain of where it would lead. In Was hast du gestern geträumt, Parajanov?, the outcome of this process, the videos are woven into a light narrative that elevates them beyond their simple documentary or personal significance. By blending them with other elements, such as music, poetry, home videos, and newly filmed footage in Iran, a delicate reflection emerges on the generational divide, both literal and metaphorical, and the effects of time and history.

Remarkably, in the film, the framework of the narrative remains poetically visible, as if the Skype videos are interwoven into a fairy tale. This transformation effectively reshapes the material into a diary. The diarist, above all, wants to transcend his own life with the material of his life, transforming it into a narrative that has a beginning and an end. Like writing a novel, life is contemplated and structured in a double temporality. In part, the diarist writes with the future in mind. The diary acquires its most fundamental meaning only when life is over. On the other hand, the diarist likewise wants to catch up with time itself. Life is constantly retold, reshaped, and rearranged. Rather than an account of past relationships at a distance, Was hast du gestern geträumt, Parajanov? is an attempt to transform a personal reality into a story, a dream beyond time.

Sabzian spoke to Fesharaki the day after the film’s premiere at the Berlinale.

Gerard-Jan Claes: Your film is constructed, for the most part, from very personal material, dozens of hours of footage of Skype conversations with your parents and your cousin. During the conversation after the screening, you mentioned that you didn’t really have the intention to make a film with those images, that you recorded them mainly as a form of diary. But the film, although very subtle, does touch upon certain themes, which hints at a certain initial intention. It raised the question for me where this film exactly began.

Faraz Fesharaki: It’s very difficult to find one moment and call it a starting point. It was more of a process, one which started five years ago. I can have different narrations about this process depending on how I look at it. I could for example look at this process from my life as a cinematographer. That I needed to find a project for myself, to work on things that I like. Because as a cinematographer I always work for other filmmakers, try to realize other people’s worlds and ideas. I needed something for myself to explore. I was trying out, discovering different things. The discovery of these video’s as filmic material was part of this process.

Another way to view this process is through my desire to make a film with my parents. Initially, I tried to recreate scenes based on memories I had written down from our time together. However, it didn’t turn out as I had hoped. Despite filming and spending a year editing the material, it just wasn’t working. Eventually, I revisited the Skype footage we had, and I had a realization: why restage scenes when they already exist? As Kiarostami often questioned, “What is the difference between the copy and the original?” This led me to focus on working with the existing material instead.

Were certain elements that play an important role in the final film – I am thinking of the notion of distance, the dialogue between different generations, and very subtly the Iranian political history and present – already present in the restaged scenes with your parents?

The elements of distance, generation clash, and the connection to the political history of the place you grew up in are part of the everyday life of many people around the world. It would have been rather difficult to omit them in such a personal narration. But I didn’t want the film to be only based on those subjects. The setup for that “restaged film” mirrored a journey my father undertook in his youth. I decided to recreate this journey with him and my mother. So, that became the backdrop for this “other film”, as I should call it now. What I wanted to achieve was perhaps to recreate or restage aspects of our time together, our everyday lives, and our connections with one another, all based on the setting of this trip. However, over time, I realized this wasn’t what I truly liked, and then I discovered this other material. This new material gradually made its way into the editing process, and in the end, only one shot from the other film remained. It was a very long process.

The film now is very structured, with two distinct parts. How did you go about writing and editing the film, and how did it develop into that structure?

To start, I had about eighty hours of footage and needed to find a way to structure it, as there wasn’t a clear story. The film doesn’t follow a linear narrative, so I had to figure out what story I could tell with the material I had. I started by sorting the footage into different categories, such as “beautiful images,” “interesting conversations,” “Mitra – my mother – is happy,” “Hassan – my father – is sad”. I created different categories and then tried to combine these elements. This led to several different versions. For instance, there was a version I liked where the entire film consisted solely of each person telling stories – every time we talked to each other, a new story was shared – but I eventually changed it again. I experimented with many different approaches, including a version where I wasn’t present at all, focusing only on my parents, observed from a distance by a strange webcam. In the end, what really helped was the music I found, along with footage from my childhood, particularly the guitar recordings. The music helped me establish the rhythm and realize where I needed a story, a conversation, or perhaps a beautiful shot, like my mother standing on the sofa. These kinds of things.

But when the first part of the film was finished, I wasn’t satisfied. I hadn’t intended to split the film into two parts – the first part was supposed to be “their” film, the story of my parents. I wasn’t happy with how it ended, and I felt stuck. At that time, I was going through heartbreak; I had just come out of a relationship, and all I wanted was to abandon this project and make another film about love or something else entirely. I couldn’t continue working on the film in its current state.

Eventually, I decided to merge the two different ideas I had in mind. That’s when I realized the first part of the film was, in its own way, also about love. After that, the second part of the film came together quickly. While the first part took me five years to complete, the second part only took two weeks because it was so clear to me – I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the locations and themes. Then it became the ending of the film.

The second part is quite “efficient” in a sense. It feels light, but it resonates deeply. When you mention having two films in mind, were you already searching for something within the material itself? There’s a moment when your father says you need a strong subject for a film, and to me that seemed to connect with the film’s own search for a “theme”. Were you actively looking for a topic, or did it naturally emerge from the material?

Honestly, I think I was more resisting the idea of being confined to a topic. I spent a lot of time trying not to be constrained by it, and I believe that’s what took me so long to figure out how to navigate it. As an Iranian filmmaker, there’s often an expectation to engage with politics and topics related to Iran. It can be really challenging to break free from these predefined categories, particularly within the context of Western audiences and festivals. I had to find a way to free myself from being confined by these expectations. After that – although I’m not sure if I fully succeeded – I began to realize that there were other themes I hadn’t been seeing, like love, hope, and other layers. Recognizing those hidden themes helped me immensely when it came to adding the second part of the film. It wasn’t obvious to me at first that this film had another dimension to it. I think one of the film’s real strengths is that it doesn’t rely on tricks or deliberately concealed ideas for the audience to uncover like detectives, but rather it gradually reveals these layers in a more organic way.

You mentioned in the conversation after the screening that the relationship with your mother was also a starting point for the whole project. The second part also begins with the attempt to reconnect with your mother. In what way was this one of the many beginnings of the film?

The other film we had planned and shot was heavily centred on my father, portraying him as the hero and focusing on his story. But when I was in the editing room working on that film, I realized I was once again telling the story of a man, repeating the narrative that had always been told to me. In our family – and I imagine in many others – the father is seen as the hero, the one with a story worth telling. But in our case, I believe my mother has a much more interesting story. She’s been through a lot, faced many challenges, and lived through countless experiences, but she doesn’t share them or place herself in the spotlight. That realization was a major reason why I stopped working on the other film and decided to return to this material to focus on my mother’s presence. On top of that, I added these other layers. The poem or letter I wrote to her came after this realization – this understanding that I was, once again, falling into the pattern of telling the story of a father as the hero.

You mentioned also your father’s comment about a certain scene not being real, when in fact, it was more real than much of the film. A lot of the work involved editing and combining different elements. How did you feel about the fact that you were, in a sense, fictionalizing yourself and your family?

Looking back, I find it strange because, while editing, I realized I could create a completely different version of my family each time I sat at the table. One day, I could portray my father as the most wonderful man anyone would love to have as a father; the next day, he could come across as the devil. One day, I could erase myself from the story entirely, and the next, I could be the cheerful, perfect son. It was bizarre how, with just a few adjustments, I could turn the same material into a completely different family.

What fascinated me was realizing that we could be one family one day and a totally different one the next, using the same footage, our own words, and our own presence. It made me think: we could be anyone, and anyone could be us. That’s what I was referring to yesterday when I said I no longer know what’s real and what isn’t. I manipulated the footage so much during editing that the boundaries between reality and fiction blurred. But even then, I don’t think it’s unreal, because what is real anyway? Even when you observe reality, you’re seeing it from a specific angle, editing it in your mind. That’s what I learned in the editing room – how different angles and edits can create entirely different versions of the same family.

You mentioned that it could have been real. Is it still important to maintain a certain boundary? I imagine you wouldn’t depict your family in a way that’s completely untrue?

That’s right, but I believe the material wouldn’t have allowed me to go that far. I pushed the material to its limits, exploring every possibility it offered. With the low-quality Skype footage, where you can’t even see the lip sync properly, I was able to insert different sentences into certain images, even when they weren’t actually being spoken. I utilized, or perhaps over-utilized, the full potential of this material. However, there were certain constraints inherent in the material itself that prevented me from going further. So, I think that, despite going as far as I could, it still remains real, even if it’s not entirely real.

Do your parents still recognize themselves in how they are portrayed?

Yes, they do recognize themselves, but they sometimes get confused. This is partly because, in a few scenes, I created the conversations by combining parts from different discussions, possibly from different years, into one. They find it hard to recall because, while it is still them saying those things in the same setting, they remember saying these things, but not in the way they are now presented.

While working with eighty hours of material and trying to connect footage from four years ago with that from two years ago, how did you manage to keep track of everything?

I had a way of mapping it out, and my selection gradually became more focused. Eventually, I narrowed it down to my favourite material, even though I wasn’t sure what I would do with it at that point. I knew each scene had potential, but it took a lot of watching, re-watching, and structuring to get there. I ended up with about two and a half hours of material that I felt had something, even if I wasn’t exactly sure what it was. From there, I started trying to combine those scenes, and to make them work I often had to return to the source material to find a few sentences, transitions, or additional points to help tie everything together.

Were you always editing alone?

I always edited alone, but after completing each version, I would show it to my producers Luise Hauschild, Ewelina Rosinska, and Mariam Shatberashvili, and also to my cinematographer friend Moritz Friese, with whom I made a short film about my parents and also shot the unfinished restaged film. I have to mention their names because there were many times when I felt like giving up. It’s challenging, especially when you’re watching yourself for so many hours over such a long period. It’s painful if you’re not a narcissist, and I don’t think I am. It was particularly hard to re-watch how I interacted with my parents. There were many moments when I wanted to stop, but my producers were always there, encouraging me to continue because they saw the potential in the material. I knew it was there too, but it was exhausting.

It seems quite unusual to have this kind of production support over so many years, especially for a project that evolves in its nature. Could you talk a bit about how they supported you in terms of production and funding?

Regarding the financial aspect, using Skype material helped keep costs relatively low. While there are still some expenses involved, they are not as significant as those for other films. For our previous project, we had support from a TV channel in Berlin, but they withdrew when they realized we weren’t completing the film we had initially proposed. Additionally, my film school supported me; they allowed me to create a diploma film as a cinematographer and then another as a director, which became this film.

Beyond the financial support, I also had strong personal connections with my producers. We’ve worked on many projects together, and I’ve collaborated with them as a cinematographer on other films, such as Alexandre Koberidze’s What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?. The support I received was not just professional but also deeply personal, and I believe every filmmaker would be fortunate to have such backing.

What is the origin of the other found footage in the film, like the images from your kindergarten? At what point did you discover them, and when did you decide to start and end the film with this material?

One day my mother gave me a VHS tape she found somewhere. I took it back with me to Berlin, where I had access to a machine that could digitize it. As the footage was being converted, I watched it and was completely shocked. The part I used in the film is from an anniversary celebration of the Iranian Revolution. We were performing a song that began with beautiful, poetic words, but then ended abruptly with all the children chanting, “Our only wish is death to America”. I had completely forgotten about this and was stunned by how I had no memory of it at all.

This made me think about how we deal with traumatic memories in our country. We literally forget. The effects and impressions remain buried in our unconscious, but we erase the events from our conscious memory. Some things happen right in front of our eyes, yet we choose not to remember them. Watching that footage, I was also surprised to see that my parents were present at the ceremony. They never spoke to me about it, never mentioned the kindergarten’s activities, and didn’t even make an excuse for me not to attend. Their lack of reaction was both surprising and deeply saddening.

There was another scene in the footage of children playing in the playground, which I found particularly beautiful. The close-ups of each child looking directly into the camera struck me deeply. I can’t quite explain why these gazes and faces are so meaningful to me, but they are. Each look seems to tell its own story. In a way, while this film is about my family, it is also about all these kids.

Though the children in the film have different stories, there’s a common experience that unites them.

It’s truly a collective experience. This was evident after the screening yesterday, especially with people from Iran, who related to it as a common story. At the same time, I believe that when you delve into something very personal, it becomes very general and everyone can find a piece of themselves in it. One of my favourite genres in literature is autobiography. I love reading diaries and autobiographical books. It’s not just about satisfying my curiosity about other people’s lives, but more about finding a reflection of myself in their experiences. I seek to see parts of my own story in their narratives.

I hoped to achieve this with the film: rather than presenting my family as a charade, I wanted to offer deeply personal material that might resonate more broadly with viewers. In this sense, the children in the film are very significant to me because they represent something more general. While each story may differ, the overall narrative embodies something that could be true for all of them.

At what point in the process did you realize that the poems would add something to the story you wanted to tell?

I don’t want to overgeneralize by claiming that every Iranian has a relationship with poetry. However, for me and many Iranian people I know, poetry – along with music – serves as a constant link to our background. While many aspects of life change, such as our perspectives and the landscape, poetry and music remain stable and constant ways to connect with our roots. Whenever I want to connect with a particular part of my background, I turn to Iranian poetry. Many of my friends share this sentiment. In the film, which explores memory, connection, and distance, I felt it was essential to include poetry. This personal significance made it a crucial part of the work.

How would you describe the presence of poetry in Iranian daily life?

In Iran, poetry is very much ingrained in daily life; many people have a wealth of poems in mind and use them to express themselves. For instance, Kiarostami had a remarkable ability to recite a verse that was perfectly suited to any situation. I find myself missing this aspect here, where it seems people don’t engage with poetry as much. While people read a lot, possibly more than in Iran, poetry doesn’t seem to have the same presence. For me, poetry provides a constant safe way to relate to the world. It’s framed in these words, it doesn’t change, it’s solid. It’s like a corridor with a door that’s always there, leading to something intriguing. Other avenues of understanding feel more fragile in comparison. Moreover, poetry can resonate broadly, connecting with people in a way similar to music, making it accessible throughout society.

As you mentioned earlier, this brings Kiarostami to mind with his tension between the copy and the original. I recall someone saying, I can’t remember who: “Why say something directly when you can use a good metaphor?” I like that a lot.

The nature of the Farsi language itself, with its lack of articles and its often ambiguous expressions, reflects this indirectness. Communication often requires asking more questions to clarify meaning, which mirrors the subtle and multifaceted nature of poetry. This reflects the way people communicate – indirectly, yet still addressing the matter from various angles. Rather than taking the most direct approach, conversations often explore the topic from different perspectives.

What I find particularly beautiful about the film is its subtlety. It explores the notion of time in a nuanced manner, touching on themes of childhood and Iranian history. The second part, with images of your hometown in Iran, is especially intriguing. It has a sense of distance, as if you’re filming instant memories. What were you aiming to convey, and what kind of images were you seeking while shooting?

In the second part of the film, I aimed to move beyond mere nostalgia or homesickness. I wanted to achieve something deeper – perhaps to make the impossible possible. For instance, I grew up by this river, which once brought life to a city in the middle of a desert. Unlike in Europe, where cities are often situated by rivers or canals, our river was a rare and vital source of life in a harsh environment. This river, known as Zayanderud, which means “the river that gives birth,” has since dried up over the years.

I didn’t want this river to exist only as a distant, nostalgic memory of the past. I wanted it to come alive again, even if only in the film. I wished to see it flowing once more, despite knowing that the situation may be worsening and that this may not be possible in reality. By depicting the river with water in the film, I aimed to bring back a piece of its former vitality and beauty.

In that sense, still discussing time, the film is indeed not nostalgic; it rather aims the other way temporally, it “projects”. It’s about dreams, about the future. It’s a very hopeful film.

I’m really glad you perceived it that way. Something I find increasingly difficult to tolerate is the socio-realist style of certain films, especially from countries like Iran. Those films often share a similar focus on suffering, portrayed through stark realism. Films that tend to be very pessimistic, dark, and brutal.

Just stating the facts, you could say.

Yes, just stating the facts. Our world is dark and often worse than we care to admit. But when I go to the cinema, I hope it can help me resist that reality. I believe that resistance comes from having hope, not from having it stolen. Often, with very social-realist films, I feel like the last drop of hope gets taken away, and that’s something I want to avoid when making films. As a cinematographer, I always try to do the opposite. That is to capture a part of reality that shows a quality of hope, of liveliness, something that sparks an eagerness to live. That’s what I tried to achieve in this film, with the dreams and the miracle at the end. It’s a reminder that there should always be a desire to live.

Your film is a beautiful testimony to a strong belief in cinema, but not as an activist tool however. You recognize that cinema has its limits as a political instrument, yet you continue to value it as a form of art, you keep exploring the possibilities of the medium.

Totally. For me, the films of Hong Sang-soo or Aleksandre Koberidze are political but not in an activist sense. They’re political because they inspire me to fight, to resist the situation, to resist the ugliness in the world. They remind me of certain qualities in life that I often forget to notice, especially as the world makes it harder to see them. These films stop me and say, “Look here, look there,” and in doing so, they recharge me, giving me the strength to resist again. In that way, they’re more political to me than films labelled as political.

In that sense, a film is a small miracle, one that creates a fictional fact that can only occur and exist within cinema. This cinematic wonder shines throughout your entire film. Now that you’ve finished the film after all these years and presented it to an international audience, how do you relate to it?

To be honest, I’ve become almost robotic toward this film. I've watched the material so many times that it doesn’t affect me anymore. I’m genuinely surprised by the positive reactions. For five years, I kept asking myself, “Why would anyone care about our Skype footage?” I always saw certain qualities in it, which is why I kept trying to find something meaningful in it. But I also wondered if it would still be interesting to others – people who don’t know me or my family. I constantly shared my edits with friends, and they knew me of course, even knew my parents. But I wasn’t sure how it would resonate with strangers. These last days at Berlinale were really important for me. I received confirmation that when you get deeply personal it can actually have broader appeal. The feedback from people who don’t know me, and aren’t part of my circle, was really encouraging. It was a relief because that question was always on my mind.