Salaam Cinema

Mohsen Makhmalbaf places an advertisement: he is looking for actors for a new film. Hundreds are expected and thousands come; the crowd breaks the doors and there is a crush. From that point the film turns away from the planned production and towards the auditions themselves. The camera films the people let into the room. Makhmalbaf asks questions, tells them to cry, tells them to laugh, picks one and rejects another, and records the reaction of those he rejects. Makhmalbaf directs. It was made for the centenary of cinema. The real subject is power. The director holds the camera and everyone in the room is waiting on his decision; after a while the audition resembles an interrogation, and Makhmalbaf does not hide it. The line between documentary and fiction is deliberately unclear. Some moments are obviously constructed, some are real, and the film does not say which is which. Everyone who comes wants to get into cinema and the reasons differ: money, fame, escape from family pressure, or simply to be seen. Those statements are a direct record of the social situation in Iran in the mid nineties. The method was argued over. Some critics said Makhmalbaf was using the participants; he argued that the film exists precisely to show that. Who it is for: viewers who follow Iranian cinema and films about cinema itself. Who it is not for: the structure is scattered, it repeats, and some of the audition scenes are uncomfortable to watch.