Inside Amir: Cycling through Tehran and the pain of departure

We are used to seeing Tehran on screen through the lens of drivers, perhaps as a reflection of the city's constant traffic jams, but also due to filming restrictions in open spaces imposed by the Iranian authorities.

From The Circle, Jafar Panahi's 2000 Golden Lion winner in Venice, to Critical Zone, Ali Ahmadzadeh's 2023 Golden Leopard winner in Locarno, the car cabin has generally served as a safe film set.

However, in Inside Amir — which won the top prize in the Giornate degli Autori competition at the Venice Film Festival earlier in September — we see Tehran through the gaze of a cyclist who restlessly weaves through the city's vast boulevards from dusk till dawn.

As he moves through urban landscapes of straight streets and green trees, the protagonist is in fact travelling through his inner world, leaping between memories and the present, between longing, dreams, waking deliriums, and prosaic reality, on the eve of his departure from a country whose complex political climate could turn him into an exile forever.

Supposed to join his girlfriend Tara in Italy soon, through their phone calls and imagined dialogues, it becomes clear that their bond once kept him from accompanying his family on a trip that ended in fatal tragedy. Now, Tara represents to Amir not only love but also the life he survived to live.

From loss to leaving

After debuting in 2015 with Temporary, focused on the topic of family home loss, and followed by Two Dogs (2021), a minimalist film about two young men who struggle with unemployment, depression, and lack of self-confidence in contemporary Iran and try to ease their loneliness through their devoted pets, filmmaker Amir Azizi seems to be moving into the next chapter, naturally coming for characters deprived of opportunities: emigration.

Described by Amir Azizi in his Director's Statement as "a quiet meditation on the emotional distance between staying and leaving — not about what's right or wrong, but what remains unresolved" and "not a statement about migration, identity, or politics, but a human story about someone trying to stay afloat," the film is rooted in personal experience yet aspires to speak through a universal cinematic language.

It moves fluidly between past and present, capturing friendships, late-night anxieties, and the lingering bond with a city that continues to shape its protagonist.

Drawn to the poetry of everyday life, the director delicately captures the subtle rhythms of "the streets, the mountains, the trees, the plains, the cities, the past, the memories, the fear, the loneliness, the people" as implied in a poem that opens the film.

Human presence and space are more important than dialogue, sensitivity comes before spectacle, and emotional vulnerability unfolds in nuances.

The protagonist's name, Amir, is the same as the director's, hinting that he is an alter ego. As Azizi reveals in an interview on Fred.fm, it is naturally a very personal film for him because most of his family has emigrated, which explains the dedication to his sister Elnaz at the end.

Azizi believes that one might take their physical self out of the country, but their spirit remains in the homeland, in the place left behind.

A quiet "Westernisation" shapes the world in which the protagonist moves, as if preparing him for his relocation to Europe: the neatly divided and strictly designed urban spaces that evoke Berlin more than a city in the Middle East just like the hipsterish look of actors Amirhossein Hosseini and Nader Pourmahin, playing Amir and Tara respectively; the absence of even a single hijab on screen; the minimalist interiors devoid of any hint of Persian tradition.

The film's intimate circle of characters – his two close friends, with whom he calmly rides bicycles, cooks, and talks about things that seem insignificant yet are in fact deeply personal – reminds us that this is ultimately his own limited social world rather than a representative societal sample.

Subtle politics, wider reach

Inside Amir recalls another small, independent Iranian film from this year, Sahand Kabiri's The Crowd, which shares a very similar premise: it follows a well-off religious family's son who helps his soon-to-emigrate flatmate organise a farewell party, thus introducing the viewer to an underground Tehran defined by libertarian views.

In this sense, both films reveal free-spirited layers within Iranian society and lead viewers through off-the-beaten-track itineraries.

However, while The Crowd directly tackles issues of gender and sexuality that could provoke the state, Inside Amir keeps its distance from explicit political engagement, which makes it rather universal.

For Azizi, the political context should be kept in the background, so that one can move forward and give hope space to urge change.

Just like the opening poem suggests: "To get better, you have to run so fast; you pass through everything. Keep running till you catch the scent of something sweet."

Mariana Hristova is a freelance film critic, cultural journalist, and programmer. She contributes to national and international outlets and has curated programs for Filmoteca de Catalunya, Arxiu Xènctric, and goEast Wiesbaden, among others. Her professional interests include cinema from the European peripheries and archival and amateur films