Meezan

An immersive documentary that demands attentive listening, Meezan transports us to the heart of the Anthropocene, along the shores of Iran, where a group of fishermen struggle to preserve their way of life and sustain an ancestral tradition now on the brink of extinction. In parallel, women work tirelessly in a modern shrimp-processing factory—time and labor embodied in two contrasting rhythms.

After years of war and oil exploitation, the banks of Abadan are irreversibly polluted. The nets come back nearly empty, the fish are in poor condition, and fishing yields little. And yet, the work continues—persisting, fishing—for the world to go on…

A realist, working-class portrait filmed in the style of cinéma vérité, Meezan places particular emphasis on listening, with an exceptional sound design by Ernst Karel, composed entirely of field recordings captured during production. The result is an immersive, contemplative audiovisual experience that invites us to reflect on the connections between bodily movement, labor, territory, and the memory embedded within them.

Watching Meezan, one can’t help but imagine the improbable collaboration of Pierre Perrault and Abbas Kiarostami. The film recalls both masters—in form and in spirit—as Shahab Mihandoust and his team document a vanishing tradition while offering a contemplative visual and auditory meditation on time, and on the space occupied by moving bodies within a geography transformed by human presence. It feels like a transcendental version of cinéma direct, attuned to the practice of “deep listening.”

Frédéric Savard
Archivist and programmer