LIBERATION – March 11, 2009 (France)

Beyond these reversals of perspectives, the festival pushes itself to show a reality that no one wants to see, surely out of fear of never again forgetting it. To begin with, A People in the Shadows, an empirical visit of Tehran, a city that has become conceptual since no one in the West really knows what it looks like. Tehran today is at best Marjan Satrapi’s Persepolis, at worst a dot on a map behind a television journalist who recounts President Ahmadinejad’s latest statements. Bani Khoshnoudi proposes another voyage, one of an almost hypnotic banality, within the chance encounters of a city in constant construction and thick traffic. While songs of war, homage to the martyrs and verses from the Koran resonate on the radio and the television, the clients of a small grocery shop complain of rising prices, vendors of Western junk grab the passer-by, and a group of men drink tea around a fire. The film shows us an innumerable number of links in a city that is not, in any case, the obscure capital that we would like it to be. Sometimes, just by turning a street corner or behind the window of a café, we can see two students flirting, a young woman letting a blond lock of hair escape her regimented veil, or a reckless young man who lets a “fashion” barber give him a questionable techno cut that he must think fits him well…
(Bruno Icher and Eric Loret)

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TELERAMA – March 11, 2009 (France)

Woman and filmmaker, Bani Khoshnoudi, 32 years old, was born in Tehran and studied cinema in the United States before moving to France. Today she splits her time between New York and Tehran. For A People in the Shadows, an impressionistic and contrasting portrait of the Iranian capital, she submerged herself in the city – which seems to be in continual construction – to meet its citizens. From this megalopolis of 14 million people, 70% of who are younger than 30 years old, she gives us a fragmented vision, respectful of its diversity. Behind images that are traditionally propagated by the regime – women in black, men with arms, and giant frescos of leaders of the Islamic Republic - little by little, she brings another reality to the surface. Young people flirting openly in a trendy café, an extremely audacious boy’s haircut, citizens who are critical of their leaders, an innovative way of wearing the veil, letting all the hair out… Many gaps that open up in a wall of prohibitions of all sorts. There remains though, the shadows of the war against Iraq and its procession of martyrs, and another shadow of that other war that could draw closer…
(Mathilde Blottière)

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POLITIS - March 5, 2009 (France)

The Cinéma du Réel Festival opens its doors in Paris on March 5 with a new artistic director, Javier Packer-Comyn, who is replacing Marie-Pierre Duhamel-Muller. In the presentation text, Javier Packer-Comyn wishes that this 2009 edition “reflects an ‘un-growth’, a deceleration of our relationship to images of the world. A constructive reaction in the face of the acceleration of the instance of the real with the diverse flux of images, all mediums confounded”. For a festival that presents more than one hundred feature and short films in twelve days within its selection, homage and thematic programs, wouldn’t this be a paradoxical idea? Not necessarily, if we judge by the dozen films (out of 37) that we saw from the international competition. Not surrendering to formatting, the most interesting amongst them, by exploring zones of reality left in the shadows, offer a representation that we have not yet seen in that which the “flux” expresses: images that are out dated by their constant repetition.

… A People in the Shadows, by Bani Khoshnoudi, with its explicit title, goes against the clichés that the media propagates about Iranian society. Filmed in the streets and public places in Tehran, the film focuses mostly on the youth, which make up the majority of its population, and few of whom have actually lived through the war with Iraq, and for whom Imam Khomeini might be a respected figure, but one of the past. Bani Khoshnoudi, a director who first immigrated to the United States before moving to France, brings out multiple signs of modernity that coexist with figures that are imposed by the Iranian regime. She films citizens who are critical of the politics of their government, jean salesmen, a young man and a woman who flirt in a café within the current trends: she with an iPod in her hand while he tells her about the years of military service that he is supposed to do. In brief, an Iran never before seen by Western audiences...

(Christophe Kantcheff)

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Critikat.com (FRANCE):

Iranian possibilities: "A People in the Shadows" by Bani Khoshnoudi [International Competition]

To draw up a portrait of Tehran is a real challenge, since Iranian society is so marked by an unfathomable complexity. The director, having immigrated to the United States in 1979, replies with patience, with little strokes, bringing out the words of the population, and allowing herself to hear the pulse of this megalopolis of 14 million people, its flux and its architecture. The organization of a sort of mirror game between the past (the Revolution of 1979 and the war with Iraq) and the present is also brought about. A People in the Shadows is, in effect, organized in chapters: “Yesterday’s graves”, “Tomorrow’s martyrs”, and “Today’s ghosts”.
Zapping on the television slips in and we realize that everything is possible in today’s Iran: a TV series dressed with rose water, 24 hour news programs, TV shopping shows and televised prayer. In a country where the official line is that the “blood of the martyrs will purify society”, Bani Khoshnoudi’s images bring something up and also its contradictory side. The unhurried rhythm gives us the precious possibility to think and to navigate perpetually between two impressions. A beautiful documentary approach that allows us to perceive all the possibilities of a pained society.
(Arnaud Hée - # 10)