Runa, a 16-year-old Kurdish girl, escaped from Iraq to avoid the attacks of ISIS. Together with her family, she had been stuck on the Polish-Belorussian border before she eventually arrived in Poland. She had to grow up at an accelerated speed – after her mother’s death she became the head of her family. Now, she needs to take care of her four younger brothers and father, who cannot cope with the mounting difficulties. The film follows their uncertain fate, but gives a prominence to the portrayal of the teenager, an ordinary and extraordinary girl at the same time. Thanks to her animated drawings, the audience can discover more about her. The film is presented in the national and international competitions.
Mehran Tamadon explores what it was like being interrogated by the Iranian regime by asking prisoners to reconstruct their experiences.
Alongside his companion film Where God Is Not, My Worst Enemy finds Tamadon shifting focus from the interrogated to the interrogator. The filmmaker sought an individual who had been interrogated by Iranian authorities in order to draw on their experiences to play an interrogator. The role finally fell to the Cannes-winning lead actor of Holy Spider, Zar Amir Ebrahimi. Together in an anonymous room, with Tamadon stripped to his underwear, they reconstruct the interrogation process, which gradually becomes an examination of the nature of power and coercion. The resulting film is intense and, at times, uncomfortable. And as it progresses, My Worst Enemy becomes an exploration of cinema’s relationship with its audience, questioning whether there is a limit to what it can show.