Where God Is Not review – victims of torture by the Iranian secret police re-enact their abuse | Movies

Mehran Tamadon’s probing movie operates a form of dialogue along with his associated documentary My Worst Enemy, because it creates sequences wherein victims of abuse by the Iranian secret police re-enact their ordeal. On this one, the title is taken from the brutal phrases sprung upon a prisoner by their jailer who declares that, inside the forbidding partitions of the jail, God merely doesn’t exist. As Tamadon’s interview topics reconstruct their cells in numerous warehouses in Paris, their testimony lays naked how terrifyingly true that assertion is.As soon as an entrepreneur dealing in video tools for main Iranian information stations, Mazyar Ebrahimi was falsely accused of espionage and assassination. With extraordinary calm, he demonstrates the varied strategies of torture inflicted on his physique, with Tamadon role-playing the a part of the detainee. In a pivotal scene, Ebrahimi will get to reclaim his narrative and briefly steps behind the digital camera, as Tamadon recreates a information broadcast the place Ebrahimi was compelled to admit to baseless costs of homicide.For others, nonetheless, this technique of reliving the previous reawakens dormant traumas – and divulges the restrictions of such a follow. Homa Kalhori, an writer who endured years of confinement, breaks into tears simply from listening to the sounds of coffins being welded, a psychological intimidation tactic as soon as utilized by her captors. It’s genuinely harrowing to see how her misery initially escapes Tamadon’s discover, all whereas being captured by the digital camera.The shortage of emotional help on set begs the query of whether or not the film-maker has absolutely thought of the psychological influence of those re-enactments. When confronted with the lived experiences of his topics, the director’s purpose of difficult their interrogators by the use of filmed workouts comes off as undeniably naive. The place God Is Not is on True Story from 12 September.