PODCAST | Matt Micucci interviews Alireza Khatami, director of the film Oblivion Verses.
Director Alireza Khatami talks about Oblivion Verses, his feature debut, which premiered in the Orizzonti section of Venezia 74. Khatami talks about the film, plot and characters, and driving themes of his movie. But the conversation goes beyond the film itself, as we try to understand his thoughts about categorization in cinema, how the filmmaking process for him begins with a mental image, and what it was like to make a feature debut, which he tells us is completely different from the short film form.
Oblivion Verses: the elderly caretaker of a remote morgue possesses an impeccable memory for everything but names. He passes his days showing corpses to those searching for their lost ones and tending to his beloved plants. When protest in a nearby city breaks out and the militia covertly raid the morgue to hide civilian casualties, he discovers the body of an unknown young woman. Evoking memories of personal loss, he embarks on a magical odyssey to give her a proper burial with the help of a mystic gravedigger who collects stories of the dead, an old woman searching for her long-lost daughter, and a hearse driver tormented by his past.