Tehran. The Movie

I should keep restraining myself from having too many expectations from cultural productions everyone is talking about over and over again. Books, movies, theatre, music...that are such a hype, especially on social media that I generously serve those days, may not be such a great work of art, but just benefit of both a touch of actuality and a great - i.e. generous - advertising budget.

Take, for instance, Tehran, the 8-episode movie released this September, a production of Apple TV and the Israeli channel KAN. Some love it, some hate it. I´ve read furious tweets against and academic investigations into various messages and turns of the story. Indeed, movies are a great indicator of political positionings and ideological interpretations of current events, an excellent example in this respect being the Bond-series.

And when it comes to the Israeli-Iranian relations you know that nothing is neutral and innocent about it. That´s how it is for now but there is no black and white but a lot of colours in between and people belonging to a shade or another.

The story: Tamar Rabinyan, an Israeli born in Iran, is in a mission in Iran, during her military service (really, at such a green age, only because of her IT skills...) as a hacker (loud laughs...seriously, since when hackers have to travel to their target destination?) on behalf of the Mossad. She is involved in some local incidents and is getting lost - while wearing a hilarious sanitary-pad like nose covering - but find help and emotional/sexual support in the arms of another hacker that she first ´met´ across the Dark Web. There are wild parties with drugs and drinking - like in Tel Aviv - and encounters with the Revolutionary Guards and various Mossad backers on the ground. Although on a mission she contacts a lost aunt married with a Muslim policeman and a daughter actively involved with the Revolutionary Guards. Tamar enters secure institutions in Iran, on whose halls she speaks Hebrew with her bosses in Israel. 

Overall: Some parts of the movie make sense, many not, there are some good actors playing excellent roles like Shaun Toub playing the Revolutionary Guard counterintelligence Faraz Kamali, there are some smart twists of the screenwriting by Moshe Zonder (the creator of Fauda) but Tamar does not make too much sense as a Mossad agent - while the other top Mossad Iranian-born woman Kadosh does, but she is killed. Some episodes are too long, and the love story between Milad and Tamar is clumsy. There are some ideological messages with a drop of truth - the mullahs stole the land, we want to take it back and they help us - and the longing for Iran of many Iranian Jews is so real. A good point is there are some smart nuances outlined between the different centers of power and the everyday Iranian is seen in a human, even sympathetic light. 

Personally, I don´t regret watching Tehran but it´s just an entertainment before and after the war is over.

Rating: 3 stars