Two-minute Iranian short film 'Thursday Appointment' wins award

AT the recent Luxor African Film Festival, an African non-profit organization that encourages and celebrates filmmaking, 20-year-old Iranian filmmaker Syed Mohammad Reza Kheradmand won an award for his short film, Thursday Appointment. 

The short film focuses on an older married couple reciting the Poem of Hafez to each other.

When they stop at a red light, they see a couple in the car next to them arguing violently as their daughter sits at the back, face buried in her stuffed-toy-cow. 

Without having to communicate their intentions verbally, the older couple proceeds to intervene with roses, through the boy whom they spared a piece of bread to. 

Their unspoken gestures help reconcile and restore love around them. When the traffic light turns green, we pan to the passenger seat, where a bowl of dates and rose petals has replaced the wife.

Independent researcher Ammar Ali Qureshi comments that “such a powerful video” could only have been produced by “cultured Iranians”.

Syed Mohammad’s brilliance does not only transcend through the screen with its simplicity, but also through the subtle details that are woven within the film.  

The poem that the older couple was exchanging with each other, which has been transcribed for us in the subtitles was written by Khwaja Shams-ud-Din Muhammad Hafez-e Shirazi, better known by his pen name, Hafez.

While Hafez was known for his love poems, he was also known for being antinomical.

We soon get a sense of this antinomy when the couple stops at a red light and is met with the younger argumentative couple. 

While our focus is on the first two couples, another car with two men silently pulls up in the background. 

Subconsciously, we are presented with a contrasting picture between the arguing couple, and the silent pair of males, and the older couple being at the centre point of them both.

Syed Mohammad has not only created opposing ideas in the film with the words of an antinomical poet in a loving couple, but also through the mise en scene (arrangement of scenery and actors).

During the part where the older couple gifts the bouquet of roses to the arguing couple, we notice that the whole scene is painted with dull tones of grey with pops of blue and red. 

We see the symbolism of passion through the roses of the older wife, but also anger as Syed Mohammad uses red on the arguing couple’s car and the young husband’s shirt. 

Although the addition of red in the young couple’s car could potentially add to the anger, going along the theme of being antinomical, the arguments stop.  

The red theme ends when the camera pans to the traffic light turning green, which then leads us to the passenger side of the car where a bowl of dates is instead of the wife. 

While this may immediately hit the viewers as a heartbreaking moment, the use of dates convinces us otherwise. 

As dates have been known to symbolise life, the additional petals of roses only reaffirm the kind of life-bringing love the couple had, which was shared with those around them.  

It is undeniable that Syed Mohammad’s sophisticatedly woven elements in his film deserves an award. 

The short film that portrays a message as simple as giving love leaves his audience wanting more. – The Vibes, November 25, 2020