SHAHID

Germany 2024, 84′
Director: Narges Kalhor
Choreography: Nina Wesemann
Cinematography: Felix Pflieger
Editing: Frank J. Müller, Narges Kalhor

 

Director Narges Shahid Kalhor no longer wants to bear the last name “Shahid” (Martyr) and casts an actress as herself, tasked with changing the family name. But then her eccentric great-grandfather appears – a man who, after his heroic death in Iran a hundred years ago, was declared a martyr, thereby bestowing the honorary name “Shahid” upon his descendants. He tries to stop his great-granddaughter from carrying out her plan.

Temporal layers intertwine, and the director and actress become entangled in a nerve-racking conflict. While the film formally shifts between reality, fiction, theater, and musical, everyone fails in their pursuit: the director in the face of bureaucracy, the actress under the director’s demands, the great-grandfather against his granddaughter’s determination – and ultimately, the film against itself. Along the way, the work questions all manner of radical ideologies – and does not always take itself entirely seriously.

Shahid is a deeply personal film about the precarious balancing act of reconciling with the past, the present, and oneself. At once a political drama and a desperate comedy.