Should I start?
How long have we been here?
I've been here since last night.
I'd have shaved in the morning.
So five or six days at least.
Maybe even a week.
I've been here for a week?
Tell me the story.
Jahangiri, I'm talking to you.
I've been unconscious for a week?
What did you drug us with?
Start at the beginning.
I'll tell you the rest,
from the moment you passed out.
You know the beginning.
It started with you.
I know the whole story.
But it has to be recorded.
On Sunday morning,
January 23, 1965,
Major...
Saeed Jahangiri ordered me to come here
to the island of Qeshm.
- Are we still on Qeshm? - Yes.
An exiled prisoner had hanged himself.
Mustafa Samei.
I knew it was common
for exiles to commit suicide.
But Mustafa Samei was different.
He only had two months left.
Only 62 days to freedom.
One day before, the Prime Minister
was killed in front of the parliament.
The case seemed suspicious.
Major Jahangiri ordered me
to come to Qeshm,
to examine the body
and to bury it.
What ensued did not accord
with those orders.
- Mr. Charaki? - Hello Major.
- I'm Babak Hafizi. - Pleased to meet you.
You too.
I owned a Chevrolet Impala
in Tehran when I was young, a beige one.
But yours looks better.
Thanks. Get in.
I've brought a worker
to help with the burial.
- Straight ahead? - Straight ahead.
He asked to be moved from the village.
That was a while ago, almost three years.
They re-examined his file in Tehran
and did as he requested.
On Saturdays he'd come to the station,
sign in and return to the cemetery.
On foot.
It's 3.5 hours by foot.
You won't believe me,
but he was mad.
- Did he have visitors? - Never.
No one at all.
He was alone.
Did anyone contact him from Tehran?
His mother.
She sent him books
and journals.
One time she sent a plastic bag
with small black seeds.
It was suspicious.
I threw them out the window.
A bunch of basil sprouted.
What about the village?
Did he socialize?
- With whom? - The grocer, for instance.
Or anyone.
No one mixes with the exiles here.
It's asking for trouble.
So all these years
he spoke to no one?
He'd talk to me. Gibberish.
I'm telling you,
he wanted to live on the cemetery.
He was insane.
He's better off dead.
Hello.
Get him down.
Place him on this table.
Cut the rope.
Here we go...
Let us begin.
- Burial... - We can't bury him here.
The village cemetery isn't far from here.
What difference does it make?
There's a thousand stories involved.
No one buries their dead here now.
I'll take care of the body myself.
I won't trouble you.
I have to bury him
and file my report.
I've travelled far.
Just bury him.
It'll be dark soon. It's a sin
to bury the dead after sunset.
This man was a Marxist-Leninist.
Just bury him.
I knew at once
that the suicide was a cover up.
He'd been murdered.
They'd strangled him with a rope,
and then hanged him.
Should I elaborate?
Yes.
The bruise on his neck was horizontal.
It ran from below the throat
to the back of the neck.
If someone's hanged,
bruising isn't horizontal.
It runs from the larynx
up to the ears.
I know that, you know that...
Lieutenant Charaki
would have known it, too.
Only, why didn't he report it?
He said he'd touched nothing.
But you could tell that
without investigating.
There was nonsense
written all over the walls,
lines from a story,
daily events,
he'd used the walls as a diary.
Let's go.
I said a prayer for him.
I'll stay the night
and take the first boat.
- You can't stay here. - Why not?
- It's a cemetery. - It's very pleasant.
You go ahead. It'll be dark.
- Aren't you afraid all alone? - No.
- Write and file your report. - Okay.
Mr. Charaki, what is this?
The photo, the geomancy and astrolabe?
The cemetery keeper used to live here.
It all belongs to him,
and the photo is of his daughter.
He killed his daughter.
It's said her ghost haunts the place.
A load of nonsense...
That's what I meant by a thousand stories.
Goodbye.
Sahib,
don't stay here.
Don't stay.
You'll be swallowed by the earth.
When a corpse goes into the ground,
the earth opens its mouth.
There'll be an earthquake.
This place is haunted.
Ghosts have no business with me.
Leave this place.
What did the worker say?
"... the earth opens its mouth
and there's a quake."
You stayed
to see the earth open its mouth.
I stayed to read
what he'd written on the walls.
There was a book on the table:
"Paradise".
He'd copied parts of it on the walls.
It was getting dark.
I stayed to read the book.
Last Wednesday at 11 o'clock...
a ghost entered Mr. Mavedat's body.
It's easy to imagine
Mr. Mavedat's shock at this event,
given the fact
that his face always
looks happy and surprised.
On that pleasant, moonlit evening,
Mr. Mavedat and three of his friends
had spread out a feast in the garden.
It was full moon,
a poetic light was cast over everything,
which threw mysterious shadows
and glistening sparkles on the river,
as if eternity were being created.
A DRAGON ARRIVES!
A film by Mani Haghighi
Based on a true story
A pipe burst in my grandmother's house.
The story begins before that,
but to me it began when the pipe burst.
Winter 2006.
A pipe had burst
right over the room
where Father's movies were stored.
I was worried about the films.
I called Mani, asked him to move them.
I hurried to my grandmother's.
My brother helped me get the films out.
Ebrahim Golestan's films
were all in that room,
his industrial films, documentaries,
unfinished films,
and all the copies
of "The Brick and The Mirror".
I found a box there
at the back of a closet.
A metal box about this big.
It was locked and there was no key.
Mani asked for the key.
I'd never seen the box before.
I told him to break the lock
to see what was inside.
There were a couple of tapes,
and some notebooks with German writing,
a piece of bone that we later
found out was a jackal's jawbone.
Some brass plates
with prayers etched on them.
A weekly literary journal
with Bahram Sadeghi's "Paradise".
And a few pictures
of three young men with a baby.
Why were these things in our house?
I recognized one of the men.
It was Keyvan Haddad with a beard.
He was the assistant sound engineer
on "The Brick and The Mirror".
He had suddenly disappeared.
The secret police had
allegedly arrested him.
I knew someone at the State Archives.
All we had was a picture and a name.
They sent us to the Prison Archives
of the Anti-terror Committee,
where we finally found some clues.
We found the most important clue
at the Anti-terror Prison Archives.
The arrest files of the three men
on the island of Qeshm in 1964,
the year Keyvan Haddad disappeared.
There we found the interrogation tapes
of the three men on the island.
It was clear
that this film had to be made.
The story
of my grandfather's sound engineer,
who'd disappeared while shooting
"The Brick and The Mirror".
This is all okay.
Back up to "This child
is a piece of someone's heart."
She got in the cab. I didn't see the baby.
She paid and got out.
Then I heard the baby crying.
I got out and called after her,
but she was gone.
Jalal?
Mr. Moghaddam?
Where did he go again?
He'll be right back. Here he is.
Sorry, I'm back again.
Where you say, "This child
is a piece of someone's heart."
The line sounded good.
- Not on my recording. - Play it back.
It's very interesting.
The poor woman...
How awful she must feel right now.
This child is a piece of her heart.
- Long time no see! - I'm here now.
We're honored by your presence!
Does this film never end?
It just started.
You're even wearing earrings!
Is that my necklace? Stop it!
That friend of yours...
Are you here to work?
- The geologist. - He's a civil engineer.
Our honeymoon...
Hafizi is looking for him.
- Who? Behnam? - Yes.
He's straight.
He's only been back two weeks.
Don't worry.
Don't get him involved.
We just have a few questions.
Hafizi was away on business.
There was an earthquake.
It's mysterious...
The Intelligence Agency
has specific questions?
The Agency has nothing to do with it.
Hafizi hasn't reported anything yet.
He just has a few questions
about the quake.
Somewhere safe. Your father's print shop.
Please. Do it for my sake.
For me.
This is something
that's tormented me for years.
If I hadn't insisted
that he did it for my sake,
maybe none of it would've happened.
And everyone would now
be somewhere else.
Jahangiri was an interesting case.
There aren't many like him.
At least none that I know of.
To be able to infiltrate
the Secret Police Agency so deeply
and to put together
his own group of people.
Especially with his biography,
having been born in northern Iran...
All this made him a fascinating figure.
And that name!
Hozvaresh!
I still don't know what it means.
Back then we thought
it was an abbreviation.
Hozvaresh are Aramaic words
in Pahlavi script
which appear in Middle Persian texts.
If you read them in Farsi,
they make no sense.
That is, unless you memorize them.
There are some 1000 Hozvaresh
in Middle Persian texts.
"Ruler", for instance, is "Malka",
"Man" is "Gabra",
"Night" is "Laylay".
It was a system of writing
that not everyone could learn.
The interesting thing is,
these members of Hozvaresh
would pass on secret information
from within,
to all opposition groups, regardless:
To the Islamic groups, the Communists,
the Nationalists, everyone.
I'm not saying a thing.
Hafizi told it to Shahrzad,
and she believed him.
- How is Shahrzad? - She's vigilant.
A secret agent told Shahrzad...
- Hafizi's not an agent. - No?
I already told you.
Then an infiltrator told Shahrzad that...
Mr. Haddad?
- Babak, come on up. - Hello.
- How are you, Keyvan?
Are you well?
- My friend Behnam Shokouhi. - Hello.
I'm sorry we have to meet here.
The matter is a bit delicate.
He'll have told you that already.
Yes, but my question is...
I know. You're right.
It's hard to believe.
This is not about belief.
My question relates to you yourself.
- Behnam is not a problem. - No...
Not in the least.
I am very grateful.
I don't have a problem, either.
I just have a question for you.
What? Am I being too frank?
- Let him speak first. - Okay.
He explained everything.
It was hard to believe at first.
I looked him in the eye
while he told the story.
I said to myself he wasn't lying.
He may be making a mistake,
but he's not lying.
Why didn't you file a report?
Why come to me?
Otherwise I won't learn what happened.
Such are the risks and dangers.
I don't want you
to do anything or fix anything.
I just want a specialist to see
the things I witnessed there.
Two specialists.
You can't go without me.
He loved to play with sounds.
He'd say, "Listen to the rain
if you're feeling hot.
It'll cool you."
He had a collection of silences
from all around the world.
He said: "Put the tape in
and let it roll,
I'll tell you where the sound is from."
I played the tape.
You couldn't hear a thing.
Keyvan listened and told me
this was Ali Sadr cave,
or the tomb of some mystic writer,
or the Chattanooga Restaurant
at 2 in the morning.
That's how I fell in love with him.
We hadn't been together long
when I had a bad car accident.
I was bedridden for a while.
He'd come and record
my breathing as I slept,
so as to listen to it back at home.
Wouldn't you fall in love with him?
- What are you doing? - Research.
The first thing I saw
was the writing on the walls.
I couldn't believe it.
His handwriting was just like mine.
Not just similar. Exactly the same.
As if, for three years,
I'd been locked up on this ship.
As if they were my own memoirs
on the walls.
As if I'd been asleep for three years
and could now read all my dreams here
and remember who I really was.
We'd only just arrived,
but it was as if I were coming home.
What's wrong?
I think some things have been moved about.
Like what?
I was reading a book.
There was an earthquake.
You're kidding.
But there was only cracking
at the cemetery.
What do you mean?
There was a 5 Richter earthquake,
but only at the cemetery.
The earth a few meters away
is undisturbed.
- Is that possible? - No.
But it happened.
What exactly did the worker say to you?
When a body is buried,
the earth opens its mouth and quakes.
So we need a body now.
He said: "We need a body"
as if we were talking about a screwdriver.
Simple as that.
A corpse, in that hell.
As I already said,
there was only cracking at the cemetery.
This is impossible in an earthquake.
Earthquakes are huge.
If there's an earthquake here,
the ground is shaken over kilometers
and you can see its traces.
But this one was limited to the cemetery.
I know it sounds strange,
but to figure out what was going on
we needed a body
that we could bury at that cemetery.
He walked around the graves,
tasting the earth in different places.
When there's a crack in the earth,
it tastes different
due to gas coming from the ground.
Then...
he saw that huge ship
and didn't ask why it was there.
We later found out
he knew the story of the ship.
Or pretended to know it.
He's a master of deception.
You never know if he's lying or not.
Do you know the story?
What story?
Of the ship and
William Baffin's 231 victims.
- Do you know it? - Yes.
Britain's William Baffin
discovered Greenland.
In 1622 the East India Company hires him
to come to Iran
and sign a silk trade agreement.
William Baffin convinces Shah Abbas
to expel the Portuguese
from the Strait of Hormuz.
Shah Abbas is to attack from land,
and the British forces from the sea.
They send William Baffin to Qeshm
to scout out the Portuguese forces.
They say that with
only five British soldiers,
William Baffin captured a Portuguese ship
with 231 sailors on board.
He forces them
to pull their ship onto dry land,
all the way over to this cemetery.
Then he decapitates all 231,
and buries them right behind you.
The next day the Portuguese attack
and kill William Baffin.
One of these graves must be his.
To find a corpse
you need to know people.
I knew Charaki.
I went out in search of him.
They said he'd gone
to see an ophthalmologist.
I asked where that was.
They gave me an address,
an hour and a half outside the village.
The guy looked like anything but a doctor.
How many people live in the village?
I haven't counted.
Are any of them close to death?
Close to death.
Are any of them about to die?
An old man? A sick child?
Answer me, Charaki.
It'll happen sooner or later.
Why?
What was that guy doing to you?
Almas? He's an ophthalmologist.
He hunts sharks, does circumcisions,
and is an ophthalmologist, too.
He was treating my eyes.
He takes shark oil in his mouth
and applies it to my eyes with his tongue.
It's soothing. You should try it.
No, thanks.
I need a corpse.
Find me one.
Day 1001.
Today I went to the Valley of Stars.
Someone was waiting for me.
He was wearing a gray raincoat
and he shot me in the neck.
He felt sorry for me.
He didn't give me the opportunity to say
he'd left something behind.
Day 743.
I decided to have breakfast today.
I walked to the station.
Charaki had two eggs. He gave me one.
I said: "Charaki, on this island
there are no chickens.
Where did you get the eggs?"
"Damn you", he said."With those words
you sent me straight into the abyss."
Day 67.
I killed a fly as it was airborne.
It's what they call a good death.
The last image it had of life
was of flying.
What'll be the last image I see?
What's that for?
Photography.
What did he write?
What'll be the last image I see?
A stranded ship?
An abandoned, haunted cemetery?
964 crumbling headstones
over an ocean of crushed bones?
Does it make a difference?
Day 1021.
It's afternoon.
I think it's July.
I've been on this island
almost three years
and have never gone swimming.
I'm lying in bed
and think about swimming.
I exercise my brain.
But I wish I were a shark hunter, too.
Day 313.
Today I heard a motorcycle going by.
It was nice, I liked it.
Day 1201.
She brought me some basil today.
She was wearing a yellow floral dress.
We went out on deck together
and looked at the graves.
We ate bread, cheese and basil.
You're in luck.
When she puts red oil
on the forehead it's all over.
Tell them we'll bury the body
in the other cemetery.
Don't tell them that.
Why? It's just a cemetery.
It's not just any cemetery.
No one's been buried there
for a 100 years.
Samei only went there
so no one would disturb him.
Just tell them. Offer them money.
It's not that.
Tell me what you want it for,
then we'll see.
This man was once a village elder,
he can't be buried in the devil's ground.
Do you want to bury another person
so the earth quakes again?
Wasn't one earthquake enough?
I went to the ship
when you left for Tehran.
You didn't report back to the Agency.
- That's bold of you. - Charaki...
think it through.
A corpse.
If not this one, then another.
Or it'll be you and that'll be no fun.
The ground is like the sea,
constantly in motion,
always shaking.
Sometimes the shaking is stronger,
they call it an earthquake.
Sometimes it only shakes a little,
like a slight itch,
you can't tell if it's really there.
There's no name for this.
I was searching for this,
for this nameless motion.
Babak!
Look at this.
What is it?
A symbol. I think it's a name.
Look.
Halimeh.
Someone visited him here.
It's on the walls too.
He was in love.
Charaki,
is there a Halimeh in the village?
There are many Halimehs here.
One that Samei knew?
There was one. Almas's daughter.
- Who's Almas? - You met him.
He was cleaning my eyes.
What was his daughter doing here?
I never saw her here.
- It was just talk. - What kind of talk?
Just gossip.
What sort of gossip? Where is she now?
She disappeared.
She's dead, at least that's what they say.
- I don't know. - Look at me.
What do you mean, you don't know?
It's their business.
We keep out of it.
And you're telling me this now?
A girl disappeared and
you didn't investigate?
Lots of girls run away from here.
They take the night ferry for Bandar Abbas
or for Ras al-Khaimah.
Ask Almas about his daughter.
He'll make mincemeat of you.
I went to see Almas,
the ophthalmologist and shark hunter.
He wasn't home.
His house wasn't a home, either.
It was a long corridor
with an oil extraction lab on one side,
and a doctor's practice on the other.
It smelled strange,
somewhere between sulfur and cloves.
Charaki was right.
I didn't belong there.
Hello.
Sorry, it was so hot I went inside.
- Let me give you a hand. - No need.
I'm Charaki's colleague.
I know you.
But that isn't a shark.
They say you're a shark hunter.
It's not shark season now.
Do you eat that? It looks weird.
We coat ferries with its oil
to make them waterproof.
How many ferries
do they build here a year?
Enough to make a living?
God is merciful.
How many children do you have?
None.
What about Halimeh?
She is dead.
Charaki only said
- she is missing. - She's dead.
Charaki said she was missing.
Where did you look for her?
You don't look for a runaway.
How do you know she's dead?
They all die. They run away at night
and are eaten by wolves.
And if they get to Ras al-Khaimah,
it's worse than death.
You knew Mustafa Samei.
Mustafa Samei.
The haunted cemetery.
I don't know anyone.
I hunt sharks.
Go inside.
Sit down.
Smoke this.
Smoke it.
You won't understand me
until you smoke it.
She said: "You won't understand me
until you smoke it."
I lit a match.
She said:
"I know you're looking for my Halimeh.
Go to the Valley of Stars.
Behind the opening
that you looked through
someone's waiting for you.
Its leg is broken.
Put five bullets in its brain
and release it.
Bury it in the haunted cemetery.
Wait. The grave will say
where Halimeh is."
That's what she said.
At least, that's what I think she said.
I don't know if it was a dream.
Fetch hot water
and the leather bag from my suitcase!
Take her.
I held the baby in my arms.
Her mother was down there.
They pulled her body out.
Babak said:
"Here's the corpse you were looking for."
She told me her father had killed Samei.
She was whispering.
I brought my head closer. She took my hand
and said Almas had killed Samei.
We can lay out her body,
take it to the village,
to the station,
and go after Almas.
He'd come to kill them both,
but she'd hidden in the cellar.
Does it make a difference
if I take this body and arrest Almas?
Does it?
I want to know what's going on down there.
Let's bury her.
Don't be afraid.
Don't be scared.
I'll stay with you forever.
I promise.
An Indian worker said:
"When a corpse goes into the ground,
the earth opens its mouth
and there's an earthquake."
This is what they call a superstition.
The corpse had been buried
and the earth had shaken.
Hafizi said
he'd seen it with his own eyes.
This is what they call a quotation.
Now I had buried Halimeh
with my own hands.
I was afraid,
as if there was another earthquake,
it'd be what they call a nightmare.
There was an earthquake again.
Really.
You can laugh here,
but you would've pissed yourself there.
When the sun rose,
we got into the Impala
and drove all round the area.
The earth had five new cracks
and both seismometers
showed a 6.2 Richter earthquake.
But 200 meters away, it was again
as if nothing had happened.
We had to excavate to find out
what was going on down there.
There was no other way.
You could've made a report to us.
No, that wasn't an option.
You'd have found out what was going on,
we wouldn't have.
The locals wouldn't have helped,
and Babak didn't want anyone else.
We brought workers from Bandar Abbas.
When they heard the cemetery's name,
they ran away.
They wouldn't even talk to me.
On the way back I met some Indians.
They were musicians,
they were just sitting around.
They'd left India
and were heading for Lebanon.
They'd run out of money
so they'd sold their instruments.
They were stuck.
I begged them and offered them money
and they finally agreed.
We boarded the ferry.
This is the ship
and this is the road you took here.
I want your guys to dig here,
here...
and here.
And your guys will dig here and here.
I want one person to dig over here.
As we left the port
I could tell we were being watched.
I didn't see anything,
but I had a strange feeling.
I thought someone was following us.
I didn't see anyone when I turned round.
I saw them when we got to the cemetery.
They were standing behind the cliffs
and peering out.
They were wearing jackets.
Black jackets.
One of them had a beard.
His glasses reflected the light.
When I looked again they were gone.
They were there for a second
and gone the next, like djinns.
Then they'd appear somewhere else.
I can't say how many there were.
They were everywhere,
and nowhere.
Behnam!
- What is it? - Come here.
I'll mention a place,
but don't look at it yet.
In front of us, above the cliff,
there's a crescent formation.
Look at it but don't raise your head.
What is it?
- Can you see two people there? - No.
I think I saw two people there.
Let's get a bit closer.
Pretend we're having a lively discussion.
Has the Agency got wind of it?
I doubt they could have this fast.
But maybe Charaki...
I saw someone.
Is it him?
I can't tell. He's too far away.
A glint of eyeglasses, beard?
He was wearing a jacket. I don't know.
Maybe they were trailing me
even before your arrival.
The Hozvaresh Ring?
There he is again!
Charaki.
Charaki is here.
Hello.
Where did you find these scrawny guys?
Cold water!
I've got cold water. Come over here!
Hurry up and break this ice.
Hello Charaki.
I could have got workers for you.
There are lots of unemployed men
at the dock.
The dock workers wouldn't come here.
Anyway, I've brought you some cold water.
Come drink some cool water.
Hurry up.
Here's some cool water.
It gets as hot as hell here.
Wait.
That's enough.
Let the others drink, too.
- Is Haddad in the ship? - Yes.
- What's he doing here? - I don't know.
And those two up there?
Drink up and get to work.
Go and see what he wants,
I'll ask what these guys know.
Darshan, come here.
Come drink some water.
I already drank some.
Don't be shy, come and drink.
I'm not being shy.
I was the first one to drink.
Darshan!
Someone get a rope,
there's some behind the ship!
Rope, rope!
They let me down on a rope.
The deeper I went,
the further I got from myself.
I ended up not knowing
where I was anymore.
I'd have liked to stay there forever,
in the darkness.
I wanted to untie
the rope around my waist
when someone took my hand.
He said, "Darshan, don't be scared.
I'm here."
Then he hugged me tightly
and pulled me out.
Pull him out.
Careful.
Fetch some water.
Careful.
Darshan?
What does that mean?
I saw a strange creature
with scales as black as tar,
and eyes red like fiery coal.
He said this in German?
He was in shock himself,
like he couldn't understand
what he was saying.
It was like a tape recorder
was playing someone's voice
from within his body.
I turned around
and saw the workers talking to each other.
They were scared.
But I was even more scared
because I could understand
what they were saying.
They were speaking in Urdu,
and I could understand
every word they said.
As if under the ground,
inside that well, something had shifted.
Charaki came and introduced himself,
saying he was Babak's colleague.
He said he'd brought me some water.
He handed me a small green flask
and said it was cool water.
I drank it,
and asked how he'd found ice
in this hellhole.
He made a joke
and said:
"Just wait."
"You haven't seen hell yet."
Then he laughed and disappeared.
I felt dizzy.
I wanted to call the guys.
Valieh felt like a huge stone in my arms.
I couldn't get up.
Then I saw myself standing at the door...
calling Babak.
I clearly remember, I called him twice.
I thought, if it's me
standing at the door and calling out,
who's leaning against the wall
and watching him?
In the midst of this chaos I heard Haddad.
He called my name.
I turned around. There was no one there.
I remember a wind was blowing,
or at least I could hear the wind.
I heard him again.
I walked towards the ship.
When and how much did you drink?
Water?
Keyvan, what's wrong?
Keyvan!
Behnam!
Did you not see him?
Did you not see our Sheikh?
Did you not see our master?
I can smell him but I cannot find him.
Get up.
Lift him up.
Thank you, you can go.
Would you like some water?
Where is Valieh?
- Who's Valieh? - The baby.
Don't worry. She's safe.
I am worried. Where is she?
- With her family. - She has none.
I'm her family.
She's with her grandfather.
With Almas?
You took her to Almas?
You gave her to Almas? You bastards!
- How could you do that! - Mr. Charaki.
She's my child.
Why did you give her to Almas?
Let go of me!
You bastards, Charaki, you son of a bitch!
Where have you taken him?
Don't worry about that. Just answer me.
Where is Hafizi?
I ask the questions, you answer.
I won't say a thing until I see Hafizi.
Hafizi's already talked.
Now it's your turn.
Hafizi's talked? Play it back to me.
I remember a wind was blowing,
or at least I could hear the wind.
I couldn't hear clearly.
I heard him again.
I walked towards the ship.
When and how much did you drink?
Water?
Jahangiri, forget about this stuff.
What was going on down there?
I ask the questions and you answer them.
Saeed!
The interrogation breaks off here.
We listened to all the tapes
but found nothing.
We even went back to the
Anti-terror Committee's Archives,
thinking maybe we'd missed a tape.
But there was nothing.
The story would have remained open.
But an employee at the Archives
told one of my assistants
that Saeed Jahangiri was still alive.
I asked: "How can that be?"
He was an interrogator fifty years ago.
Then we found out he was born in 1943.
He'd been only 23 then.
Mr. Haghighi asked me to play myself.
I said I'm not an actor.
Back then I was twenty years old,
I was a kid!
After all, it's 50 years ago.
Mr. Haghighi said
that age wasn't an issue,
that I knew best
what had happened in that room.
The age of the interrogator
in the film wasn't important to me.
But having a real person
play himself fifty years later
was very appealing.
All I could do back then was let them know
that they were in danger:
they were being taken to their deaths.
I sadly couldn't help Mr. Haghighi.
I don't really know what happened next.
Perhaps Shahrzad Besharat knows.
Hozvaresh had five members.
One was Saeed Jahangiri,
who's still alive.
One was Babak Hafizi,
whose fate is unknown.
Two members were Isfahan agents.
They were Morudijan und Peyman Hariri.
But I believe the most important person
was Shahrzad Besharat.
She turned her back on politics
and worked in theater.
She worked with well-known directors.
In '67 and '68 I no longer had
a connection to the Agency.
I spent my time with theater people.
I was a stage assistant
and sometimes played small parts.
In '68, Abbas Nalbandian's play
won the National Radio and TV Award
for the best script.
The play's title was:
"A Deep, Vast and New Insight
into Fossils of
the 25th Geological Cycle."
On the opening night
everything changed for me.
There is a secret between you all.
Oh you thieves!
You have stolen his scent.
You have stolen a proud breeze
bearing his scent.
What are you saying?
Our patience is at an end!
We have packed our belongings.
Are you seeking someone?
You seem like an absolute stranger.
Are you seeking a woman?
How pained you look!
As if you haven't rested in months
in a woman's warm bed.
Fog fills and empties the stage.
Oh trace of the holy One
Why do you flee from us?
You know the fate of your devotees
From the other world
For the sake of my warm tears
For the sake of my ashen face
Behnam?
Hello.
Shahrzad, I have to tell you something.
Say nothing, ask nothing.
- Where is Keyvan? - Listen to me.
I've found a way to leave Iran.
They're waiting for me below.
- Where is Keyvan? - I know where he is.
I'll tell you,
but first you have to listen to me.
Tell Keyvan the following.
Will you listen?
Tell him everything's in Halimeh's grave.
- Meaning what? - Do you understand?
Repeat it.
- Everything is in Halimeh's grave. - Good.
What did you all do on Qeshm?
The less you know the better.
Keyvan is in Isfahan...
They might follow you. Be careful.
I'm crossing the border tomorrow.
Give me 24 hours.
Go to Isfahan tomorrow night.
Give Keyvan the message.
He'll follow you.
Repeat the sentence again.
Everything is in Halimeh's grave.
Behnam!
Hide it in Halimeh's grave!
A can of baby formula, please.
Excuse me.
You dropped this.
Everything is in Halimeh's grave.
When he got back from Qeshm,
he visited me.
I'd waited for him for three years,
but now I didn't want to see him.
I was scared of him.
In the box that he had found
were some negatives.
He asked me if I could get him
the keys to the Golestan Studio.
He wanted to develop the negatives
in the darkroom there.
That was the last time I saw him.
- Were you followed? - No.
Are you going out?
What did Behnam say exactly?
I already told you.
He said everything is in Halimeh's grave.
Is that all?
There's nothing in this box.
The negatives are all destroyed,
the rest are just souvenir pictures.
- Take a look. - I don't want to see.
A piece of bone,
"Paradise",
Behnam's notes are all destroyed.
What was I to find here?
He didn't want you to give up on the case.
You are to finish what he couldn't.
Did he tell you anything else?
Did he say what happened to us that night?
He said it's better I don't know.
Sit down a minute.
They're waiting for me.
Sit.
I don't want to know anything.
They arrested all of us,
harassed us.
Jahangiri is still in jail.
I didn't say a thing.
But now I want to go. I want to live.
Are you going so as to now live?
- Did you speak to your source? - Yes.
He didn't know a thing about the cemetery,
except they'd excavated something
after you all left.
- What? - He didn't know.
A living thing. A creature.
He asked me to tell you to leave it be.
You can't find out anything else...
you have no possibilities.
He said they're still after you.
Whatever you did there
is still a serious issue for them.
He showed me a thick file
on your activities at the cemetery.
He made an allusion.
They obviously knew of Behnam's escape.
He's in Europe.
He went to Aachen for a few days,
stayed with old schoolmates.
Then he disappeared again.
He just wanted to show he could escape.
My source says
you should pretend to escape.
I won't run away.
Write me a letter.
In your own handwriting.
They read my letters. All of them.
I'll find a way to have
it sent from abroad.
It's easy.
This way they'll read the letter
and think you've also escaped.
Shahrzad...
I want to be with you.
I won't write a letter.
What?
I didn't hear from you for three years!
Everyone thought you were dead.
They were looking for your corpse.
I've left you, Keyvan.
You need to understand this.
- Understand me. - No, you understand me!
Very well.
There's paper there.
I'll put myself in your place.
Write.
April 5, 1969.
Dear Shahrzad. Hello.
I hope you're well.
- Write! - I'll write it myself.
April 5, 1969.
Dear Shahrzad.
Hello.
I hope you're well.
I hope you're as radiant as your smile.
I hope your smile is like the one
I dreamt of for three long years.
This is the beginning of a penance for me.
I never got the chance...
Life didn't give me the chance
to say goodbye to you.
Face to face.
They didn't give me the chance
to embrace you,
to tuck your hair behind your ears,
to kiss you,
to look at you,
and say: "Shahrzad,
my dearest Shahrzad,
my love,
my lady,
I'm gone.
Gone, never to come back.
Goodbye."
Stop filming.
Or she'll kick us out.
Don't worry. We'll ask permission first.
- Ask her first. - That's the doorbell.
Hello?
- Mr. Haghighi sent us. - Come in.
The shoot
was interrupted for nine months
because Jahangiri and Shahrzad didn't know
what had become of those three.
I was stuck, not sure what to do.
Until one morning
when I was checking messages at work,
I heard a message from a woman
saying she knew we were making a movie
and that she could help us.
Back then we received
many messages like that,
so I didn't take it too seriously.
I sent my assistants to check it out.
I found this among my father's things.
There was a note on it saying
if anyone came asking about this affair,
I should hand it to them.
I read that you were making a movie
about three young men
doing research at a cemetery in 1964.
I thought this must be it.
- Your father... - Keyvan Haddad.
But he didn't have a wife or kids.
We researched this.
No he didn't. My father never married.
He adopted me.
- So you must be Valieh? - That's right.
- Did your father pass away? - Yes...
in the '87 rocket attacks,
along with my son.
Here's the envelope.
Testing.
One, two three...
Okay.
Tehran,
December 22, 1982,
3:45 pm.
I'm sitting in front of it.
I've loved silence all my life,
but I'm hoping for a sound now...
so you'll believe it exists.
Believe that it's in front
of me right now,
this old dragon.
I've been looking for it for 20 years.
I finally found it today.
In a dark cell, right here in Tehran.
Once it was able
to shake an entire cemetery,
crack the earth and spill out its guts.
I saw it with my own eyes.
But now it can't move.
Its breath is silent.
A huge snake that just looks at me.
It slowly blinks once in a while.
Too bad I don't have a gun.
I'd shoot five bullets in its head
and release it.
But all I have is this flimsy microphone.
You wouldn't even believe me
if it made a sound I could record.
Nor even if you were to see it.
You'd think you were dreaming.
Maybe I'm dreaming, too.
My problem is that I know.
I know I'm awake.
I know it's here in front of me
and I can only listen to its silence.
For God knows how long.
There's nothing else on this side.
Just absolute silence.
But this is the B side,
and what you might not notice at first
is that it's labeled:
"He who turns me over
will know my secret."
They separated us.
Took us separately to be interrogated.
Then they'd take us out again
and take another one in.
Suddenly Charaki came and said:
"We're to take you to Tehran."
Jahangiri, forget about this stuff.
What was going on down there?
I ask the questions and you answer them.
Saeed!
- Don't ask questions. - What do you mean?
- Listen. - What's going on here?
It's serious.
They'll soon know who we are.
Excuse me, Major, orders from Tehran:
We transfer them immediately.
The ferry is waiting at the port.
Get up!
This is an interrogation room.
I'm working.
Orders from the head of the Agency.
Get up, Mr. Hafizi.
I'm talking to you! Get up!
I forgot my glasses in there.
He says he forgot his glasses in there.
Tell him to come in. He has to sign this.
Go in.
Sign this.
Sign here.
What's he saying?
He says we left something behind.
What?
Valieh!
We have to go back!
We left Valieh behind!
Should I go?
I'll go.
Give it to me.
You got my message.
I was waiting for you.
Give me the gun and take the baby.
She gave me her granddaughter
and took Babak's gun.
She fired five bullets
and killed Almas in his sleep.
I never found out
what she did with the sixth bullet.
When I got in the car, Behnam said:
"He's gone."
I turned around.
Babak was dead.
His eyes were still open.
They shone in the light of the fire.
There was no time to bury him.
We drove to the gulf.
Written, Produced, and Directed by Mani Haghighi
Director of Photography: Houman Behmanesh
Editor: Haideh Safiyari
Set Designer: Amir Hossein Ghodsi
Costume Designer: Negar Nemati
Sound Designer: Amir Hossein Ghasemi
Sound Recording: Dariush Sadeghpour
Make-up: Mehrdad Mirkiani
Music: Christophe Rezai
Production Manager: Majid Karimi
1st Assistant Director:
Mehdi Tavakoli Zaniani
A DRAGON ARRIVES!
Amir Jadidi
Homayoun Ghanizadeh
Ehsan Goudarzi
Nader Fallah
Ali Bagheri
Kiana Tajammol
Kamran Safamanesh
Shahin Karimi
Island of Qeshm, 2016