ATIYE ZARE ARANDI: GRAND ME (2024) NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2025 A child of divorced parents decides who she wants to live with We who have watched Iranian films, maybe known some Iranians, know they're complicated people, that their greatest skill is in making life difficult for each other. This short documentary by Atiye Zare Arandi about her neice and focused on her famnily and their tense discussions of her custody is, therefore, excruciating. But it is curiously satisfying, because there is something like a resolution, even a happy ending. The question is answered. No cusody court: the child, nine-year-old Melina, does not want to reject her father's claims on her and opt for living with her motner. She wants to continue living with her maternal grandparents in Isfahan. She certrainly does not want to go and live with her father (Ramin) in Tehran. But she finds her mother (Atefeh) "irritating sometimes" and doesn' want to live with her either. But with her grandparents after all she is happy, and in the final footage of a trip to the country and playing in the snow, happy she seems to remain. What was all the fuss about? Well, they are Iranians: how can you even ask?
In the possibily Kiarostami-inspired car scene, segments of which are intereperced through the film, Mama is driving and Melina is sitting beside her and they dialogue. Melina delivers a fiery, devastating critique of her mother. She aays neither her father nor her mother should have divorced. At the end she says in any case they are all alone. Everyone in the world, the "dunya," is always alone. This from a nine-year-old! It's astonishing, both the maturity but also the fire and energy of delivery from this skinny tyke. When they come back to her grandparents Melina says from the car, smirking, "I taught her a lesson," and adds, "I slaughtered her." And she did.
But of course: Melina is almost frighteningly precocious and smart. We learn that she has gotten excellent grades in all her subjects. Her grandmother teases her about this at first, saying it was bad news and holding the report away from her. Also, we see a set of drawings of big-eyed creatures the girl has made, which show variety and rich color and reveal an impressive ability, at nine, to work in series and even mount the seies neatly on her bedroom wall. We may also note that though she is dissatisfied and fearful about her father, she never gives in to emotion or breaks into tears. In these difficult, tense days she remains a tough cookie.
But despite Melina's apparent right to decide in court who she wants to live with, she can't travel to Turkey with her mother because her father controls her right to a passport and won't let her have one.
In the car we stare at the beautiful but sad face of Atefeh, her mother, which has something helpless about it. She despairs of ever winning back her daughter's love and trust.
All this footage the aunt has shot also shows well off, roomy apartments - glimpses of comfortable middle class Iranian life. A litlte music has been judiciously added by Naïma Joris. The editing has been done by Katarina Türler in a way that provides order and economy and a measure of pacing to the film.
The biggest shocker is a conservative muslim coming-of-age ceremony in which Melina, at her ninth birthday, is filmed in identical nun-like costume with two dozen other just-turned-nine girls, who are charmed and lectured by a slim, handsome young imam in gray who charms them while coaxing them always to wear hijab with their hair covered and never appear before men with "thin tights." At home, we notice women continue to wear hijab (except when as young as Melina) while the men are fat and badly dressed and one even goes shirtless in the kitchen with a repulsive hairy back on view.
The father is never seen, and Melina avoids answering when he calls. Sometimes she doesn't answer when her mother calls either, which she lies to cover up. Once her father comes for her and there is fear that he may not bring her back. He keeps her for four days instead of one, and when she returns she runs into her grandmother's arms looking stricken but doesn't speak. Ominously, we have learned that her father has thought twice about having her live with him because he has an adult son. . . and she is not bad looking. (In fact one of the best scenes staged into the camera by Melina is one in which, posing as a pretty person, she gives a mock lesson, using herself as the model, on how to do makekup for a party. ("The next time I will show makeup for mourning.") This is a film that comes to seem more than it does at first as the complexity of the people and especially of this precocious girl emerges.
Grand Me, 80 mins., debuted Mar. 18, 2024 at CPH:DOX (Copenhagen) and won the Next Wave Award there., also showing at Taipei (Golden Horse), DMZ (South Korea), and DocPoint (Helsinki). Screened for this review as part of New Directors/New Films, MoMA and Film at Lincoln Center.
Showtimes:
Saturday, April 12
2:00pm at MoMA, Titus Theater 2
Sunday, April 13
1:15pm at FLC, Walter Reade Theater
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