On next
Tehran, Under the Skin
Sat
17
Sat 17 Oct 4:45 PM
Palace Nova Eastend: ExiMax
General Admission
Unclassified 15+
81 Mins"Whatever we do to our bodies, we may not feel empowered inside.” So says one wise woman interviewed in Iranian filmmaker Afsaneh Salari’s eye-opening documentary about the plastic surgery epidemic sweeping its way through Tehran’s fashion-conscious population. She wonders aloud if Iranian women have internalised the regime’s brutal insistence that “We are not equal.” Even the surgeons who stand to make a fortune from their insecurities are quick to set realistic expectations on what can and cannot be achieved: “Even God has not created someone completely symmetrical.” Never judgmental, Salari’s hypnotic, TIFF-debuting film blends these to-camera insights and the briefest glimpses of surgical blood with a dreamy, lushly scored quality. As it drifts through Tehran’s towers and tunnels, she asks if the oft-toxic drive to be ‘beautiful’ matches the country’s rise and fall and rise again, in crazy days where the truth is more inscrutable than skin deep.