Director: Mohammad Rasoulof
A "visual and narrative delight" (Boston Globe), Mohammad Rasoulof's Iron Island is also a skillfully framed allegory about the politics of survival and rule of law in the contemporary Arab world. Moored a few hundred yards off the Persian coast, a derelict oil tanker has become a thriving home for cast-off members of Iran's Sunni-Arab minority. "As long as I1m with you," says Captain Nemat, proud patriarch of Iron Island's floating shanty-town, "you shouldn't worry about a thing." But when the ship's owners announce they intend to sell Nemat's fiefdom for scrap, and the ad hoc community's on-board teacher discovers that the ship is slowly sinking, the captain must provide his people with a future, while preserving the peace and upholding the law in the present. With his brash young protégé (Beautiful City1s Hossein Farzi-Zadeh) risking shipboard harmony and his own life in a forbidden romance, Captain Nemat finds his authority and his humanity tested to the breaking point. Celebrated Iranian actor/playwright Ali Nassirian gives the performance of his career as Nemat - an all-purpose skipper, factory boss, lawgiver, matchmaker, and lobbyist who bustles from deck to deck and plunges from crisis to crisis. As looming catastrophe transforms Nemat into a liberator and a potential executioner, whimsical storytelling and documentary clarity give way to a harrowing intensity and mythic beauty that is "haunting, exhilarating, and quietly disturbing" (Los Angeles Times).
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