Germany, 2018, 93 min., Director/Screenplay: Susan Gordanshekan, Cast: Pegah Ferydoni, Hadi Khanjanpour, Distribution: Glory Film/Munich
- Festivals: Berlinale 2018, Shanghai 2018, Taipei 2018
Mina, 31, is relatively late in her decision to finally marry. Kian, too, is exhausted from failed dating attempts in Germany, and at last follows his mother’s advice: to hire a professional matchmaker who will find him a wife from Iran. When Mina moves as Kian's wife to Germany, she must get used to her role as a married woman in a culture foreign to her. Without really knowing each other, the perfectionist Kian and the dreamer Mina do their best to live up to the image of a harmonious married couple—and fail continuously. Susan Gordanshekan, whose parents have found each other through a mediated marriage in Iran, manages to create a sensitive marriage drama that defies cliché and dedicates itself to love from an unusual angle of pragmatism.
Susan Gordanshekan was born in Kassel in 1978. Her parents, Mohammad Gordanshekan and Batul Torabian, were both from the Iranian city of Isfahan. Gordanshekan grew up bilingual in both German and Farsi, and much of her work explores the experiences of characters with hybrid identities. Her films
Tarof (2005),
Garçons manqués (2007),
Eisblumen (2011), and
In Limbo (2016) are all multilingual works, showcasing her ability to convey intersections between cultural backgrounds through language in film.
A Dysfunctional Cat is her first feature film, and was screened at the 2018 Berlinale and the 2018 Shanghai International Film Festival.
Back
