Fifi Howls from Happiness

Bahman Mohassess was among the celebrated artists of the Shah’s time. He trained in Italy and made sculpture and painting in his own country. His work was censored again and again, and his nude figures drew objections. Being a gay man put him in a hard place in his homeland as well. After the revolution he vanished; it was said he destroyed the paintings he had left and disappeared. The director Mitra Farahani finds him in a hotel room in Rome. She sets up her camera and listens; Mohassess talks, recites poetry and rages. While the filming goes on his illness advances, and the film closes with his death. Mitra Farahani’s documentary, ninety six minutes long, is a coproduction of Iran, the United States and France, completed in 2013.