Wavelengths: Anoushahpour/Aljafari

Bringing together new work by Parastoo Anoushahpour (The Time that Separates Us, TIFF ’22) and Kamal Aljafari (With Hasan in Gaza, TIFF ’25), this programme’s two films reflect on the meeting point between imagination and memory — both personal and collective — as experienced from the perspective of children and the aged.

Shot in multiple Kurdish-majority villages on the border of Iran and Turkmenistan, and edited over the past decade, the starting point of Anoushahpour’s Peacocks Come with the Clouds is a series of elegant wedding embroideries. Anoushahpour invokes these precious objects by way of workshops with local children, whose (re)interpretations of their images expand and evolve with a sense of wonder. Meanwhile, the filmmaker similarly expands the frame, folding in moments of life around these villages — including farm fields and slaughterhouses — offering a portrait of a place where history and narratives appear at once fixed and malleable.

The film is paired with Palestinian filmmaker Aljafari’s Masao Adachi Takes a Passport Photo. In 2000, Adachi, one of Japan’s great maverick artists, was deported back to his homeland after 27 years of exile — including three inside a Lebanese prison — having initially travelled to the country in support of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Upon his repatriation his passport was swiftly confiscated and, in the decades since, all efforts to obtain a new one have been summarily refused. As the title suggests, Aljafari’s understated documentary observes the octogenarian’s final attempt to attain this vital document. Unhurried and attuned to the minute details of the long-running photo studio — particularly its charming matron — the film offers an invaluable audience with a truly singular figure.

JESSE CUMMING