Staff Pick Premiere: "Umbra" by Saeed Jafarian

When Jeffrey isn't busy curating the best videos to watch On Demand, you might find him watching more movies, biking to movies, or painting distorted Where's-Waldo-esque landscapes. He's programmed for the Tribeca, Hamptons and Rooftop Film Festivals.
Jeffrey Bowers

This week’s Staff Pick Premiere, “Umbra,” directed by Saeed Jafarian, is an atmospheric short chock full of moods, metaphors, and a heavy dose of the unknown. Since its premiere in 2018 at the Cannes Film Festival, the film has continued to haunt our dreams.

As the clock strikes midnight in Iran, a young woman realizes her partner has somehow disappeared from their apartment. Her instinct to find him pushes her outside onto curiously empty and dark Tehran streets. Calls to her partner are left unanswered, but what appears in his place is a mysterious and handsome man who snarls at her. As if finding a stray dog in the street, she and the audience are unsure of his character.

What ensues is a fascinatingly tense exploration of the fine line between fear and lust, isolation and independence, and security and freedom. Building off specific social and storytelling  cues, Jafarian crafts a unique horror film that subtly transforms into a uniquely modern and progressive tale of women finding their own truth.

Ahead of this week’s release, we reached out to director Saeed Jafarian to understand what inspired his short and the challenges he faced in completing it.

On the film’s inspiration:

"This goes back to a year before the script was written. My close friend's husband threatened her with suicide after their divorce. He wasn’t answering his phone or the door. A little later the door had been opened, but there was no sign of him in the house! A few hours later, of course, her husband was found alive. He had only left the house for a few hours and had not harmed himself. After this happened, the idea of 'Umbra' came to my mind. The story of a woman whose partner suddenly disappears in the middle of the night for no reason."

On Iranian censorship:

"We unfortunately tolerate a lot of censorship in Iran, but the censors are less sensitive to short films and therefore, less involved with it. However, my film was censored during its screening in Iran. The censorship office did not allow the girl back to the street at the end of the film. They removed 14 frames from the end of the film. For me these 14 frames have all the meaning of 'Umbra' and so, unfortunately, a meaningless film was screened in Iran."

On emptying the streets of Tehran:

"I love suspense and magic. In fact, I like a kind of suspense in which the elements are not knowable. Something like what we see in horror movies. The difference between the kind of suspense I like and horror movies is that my suspense emits more from the atmosphere of the movie than from a horrible creature. In fact, I want the suspense to absolutely come from the environment and not from what is in that environment.

The empty street at night is scary in itself. Now, when we add a scared girl to it, the amount of this suspense increases. The partner of my female character suddenly disappeared in the middle of the night. This is a scary thing. To convey this feeling and to get as close as possible to what is going on in her mind, I take her to the dark and empty streets to show her desperation, fear, doubt, and even courage. The empty street also has a hint of magic to me. Something like a dream. I like to explore the mentality of my characters through dreamy atmosphere."

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On finding the right balance of fear and intrigue for the male antagonist: 

"Writing the first version of the script took about three months, but we (me and Fatemeh Abdoli, as co-writer) were still not satisfied. A week before filming, I decided to change the script. So, in a crazy decision, and in just two days, we rewrote the entire screenplay. The second script was completely different from the first version. For us, the second version was deeper. Its metaphorical and symbolic approach brought us a lot of excitement. This change in the script was entirely due to the highlighting the male character. In the first version, the man was just a transient character. Fatemeh suggested that we must pay more attention to this scary character and try to establish a strange relationship between him and the girl in order to understand the girl's need for freedom. This idea changed the whole script."

On writing the male character: 

"To me, the man was a guide who tempted the woman to step into another world. A world that is not necessarily a better place. A world that may even be scary and unpredictable. This ignorance about this new world is frightening. On the other hand, my women must have a passion to this world. Both of these qualities must have been present in my male character: Fear caused by ignorance and passion.

So I had to create a character that was not only scary but also sexually attractive. It's like walking on a rope. The environment, situation and story of the film also contribute a lot to make this amalgam of fear and passion. The face and shape of the actor also helped a lot to implement this feeling. I was looking for a face that looked both scary and charming. Banipal Shoomoon is the actor who we ultimately cast in the role, 4 days before shooting. He is a theater actor famous for his mesmerizing work."

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On challenges faced:

"At first when I was writing the script, I had the vision that the camera should be floating, so that it would evoke suspense and fear. But our film was very low budget and we had limitations for using camera and equipment. We had to use a Sony Alpha 7 camera and shoot all shots with an amateur steady-cam. But our biggest challenge was keeping the streets empty. For each shot, we would need ten or even twenty takes more than normal because the streets were never completely empty."

On what's next: 

"I have made another short film called 'Wet,' which has just finished its technical stages and is waiting for festivals for its world screenings. Other than that, I'm writing a feature script that I plan to make it next year."

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