Tehran, Tehran

The reason I chose "Tehran, Tehran" to watch was Mehrjuei. I admire him for his great works like "Hamoun" and "Tenants", but he didn't get better than those days. In fact he started to what you call "losing it".

But about the movie: Tehran municipality invited two directors (Dariush Mehrjuei and Mehdi Karampour) to make films about Tehran.

Tehran, Tehran (first episode, directed by Mehrjuei) is about a poor family who finds their humble house in ruins just before new year holidays .. (SPOILERS) >> They decide to spend next day touring Tehran, but they miss the touring bus. Accidentally, they meet a group of old men and women who are touring Tehran, they join the happy group; and finally rebuild their house with their help << (SPOILERS)

The story was unbelievably lousy. The characters didn't have any depth and director did whatever he liked, whether the audience believes it or not. Since I wasn't interested in Karampour's previous work (Who killed Amir?) I left the movie theater nearly at the end of the first episode.

Tehran Tehran is composed of two segments. The first is directed by the veteran Iranian director Dariush Mehrjui whilst the young director Mehdi Karampour helm ed the second. Both were made for Tehram Municipality with the intention being to highlight Tehran's many interesting locations and attractions.Also, it seems Mehrjui was requested to aim his film at the older audience whilst Karampour's brief was to target his segment at the young generation.

Mehrjui has done a similar film in the past where he made arguably the best segment in Tales of Kish, a similar project composed of multi segments made for Kish Island's Municipality.

In Tehran Tehran Mehrjui has skillfully inserted a narrative in a Tehran travelogue. A relatively poor family are sitting at home awaiting the Iranian New Year when their roof collapses and they are temporarily homeless. Help arrives in the shape of a party of old age pensioners who are going on a tour of Tehran and offer ride and shelter to this family. There are echoes of Mehrjui's The Tennants and Mum's Guest and his use of veteran actors such as Katayoun, adds to the nostalgic theme of his story.

Karampour on the other hand has treated his film as a short film with only a nod towards showing Tehran locations. His segment, which is reminiscent of Ghobadi's No one Knows About Persian Cats, follows members of an underground rock band in Tehran after their planned concert has been canceled at the last minute by the authorities. Lack of communication between the generations and ideologies appears to be the main theme here.

Older viewers are more likely to enjoy Mehrjui's segment whilst the younger generation may find Karampour's more interesting.