‘The Siren’: Berlin Review

Dir: Sepideh Farsi. France/Germany/Luxembourg/Belgium. 2023.100 mins.

Sepideh Farsi’s first animation takes us back to 1980, and the port city of Abadan in the southwest of Iran. Life for 14-year-old Omid changes in an instant when his kick-about football game with friends is abruptly interrupted by Iraqi missiles striking a huge oil refinery. Omid’s mother and sister flee the city, but Omid stays – in part to care for his stubborn grandfather, but mainly to search for his older brother, who impetuously signed up to fight at the first inkling of the Iran-Iraq war. Farsi (Tehran Without Permission) has made a striking, bleakly beautiful account of living in a war zone, which captures a specific and traumatic moment in Iranian history while obliquely acknowledging the present-day dissent against the current regime.

A striking, bleakly beautiful account of living in a war zone

The use of animation permits Farsi to tell a story that might otherwise have presented a challenge: both she and screenwriter Javad Djavahery are currently exiled from Iran and are unable to enter the country. Zaven Najjar’s striking graphic style recreates the city of Abadan as it was, before the conflict all but razed the city. And as with Ali Soozandeh’s Tehran Taboo and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, animation opens a door for the filmmakers, offering them the leeway to engage with themes and subjects that would be outside of the scope of a live-action picture shot in Iran.

Farsi’s previous films, which span documentary and fiction, have consistently found a home on the festival circuit: her documentaries Harat and Tehran Without Permission both premiered at Locarno, and her feature films Dreams Of Dust and The Gaze bowed at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Following its premiere at the opening film of Berlin’s Panorama, further festival interest is likely for The Siren. And while adult-themed animation can present a marketing challenge, the film could be of interest to an adventurous arthouse distributor or curated streaming platform.

Although in his early teens, Omid is on the cusp of manhood – or at least believes himself to be. The wisp of a moustache is visible on his upper lip and he hovers tentatively on the periphery of the cock fights that the grown men frequent, hoping that one day his prized cockerel Shir Khan will triumph in the ring. But living in a city under constant bombardment forces him to grow up rapidly and reappraise his priorities.

Taking over the food delivery business of an injured friend, Omid sees a side of the city to which he had hitherto been oblivious. He meets Armenian Christian priests cloistered behind a high wall; the eccentric engineer who lives in a half-finished shell of a building along with countless stray cats; Pari, a teenage girl; and her mother, Elaheh, a singer and a star from the pre-revolution period. Gradually, Omid forms a plan to rescue these and other civilians stranded in the city.

The picture looks terrific – Zaven Najjar’s design and animation uses a stripped-back colour palette of earthy sand tones and dusty blues, accented with arresting slashes of red, to powerful effect. But equally powerful is the use of music throughout, in particular the recurring motif of a drum that links Omid to the memory of his late father, and to the inherited survivor’s spirit that may just be the key to his escape from the besieged city.