Shown in Compétition #5.
Synopsis
There is, always, something between every single relationship and friendship. someone is looking and someone is passing by. Trust is not a negotiable thing.
Text from the selection committee
With this film, Esmaili Zand succeeds in a double performance: to familiarize himself with the main tactics of the experimental (multiple superimpositions, scratched images, rhythmic editing with an eye towards silver), and to use local, Iranian visual and human material to make palpable a daring project, perhaps unheard of in Iran? It is a step forward from another of his films A Man With Impression, based on a series of visual declinations around the work of Claude Monet. With Power Which Can Be Abused, the filmmaker kneads with local clay (girls, cracked fictions, reappropriation of images) a gripping film. Yes, one can make exciting and experimental films with local images and the rendering is surprising.
Translation made by the translator www.DeepL.com/Translator
– R.B.
What is the starting point for your film ?
There were a lot of ideas behind this film; firstly it starts with the relation between Kafkaesque stories and David Lynch works, then I made an ode to Guy maddin (the making of the film, camera angles and the act of actresses). And secondly it was based on a story I wrote last year when I was in Paris, about the trust, loyalty and family problems. I was about to put narrations, like silent movies, in this film, but finally decided to make the audience comfortable to get what they really want from the film. I was highly impressed by the works of Guy Maddin and Peter Tscherkassky.
What equipment did you use to create it? What did you shoot with? Can you explain the creative process of Power Which Can Be Abused?
Actually, it is a very low budget film, because of the storyline. We shoot the film with two cameras (Nikon 5300 and Canon 5D). Some of the shots of the film were shot in 2019 and some in 2020. There are 4 different apartments that we decided to shoot our movie because of their unique style for the bedroom, kitchen and the balcony. The most important part of the film was sound design which takes 2 months to be completed.
How do you think your images relate to what they say?
This is the story of trust, crime and metempsychosis, these are something that we have a lot of stories in the history of Cinema about. I watched so many German Expressionists films and it’s helped me a lot to finalise my story board to be ready to make the film.