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By Alissa Simon

Substractionby the idiosyncratic Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi (“Men at Work,” “Modest Reception,” “A Dragon Arrives!”) is a tense Hitchcockian thriller set in Tehran, where heavy, nonstop rain signals lingering unease. There, a young couple meet their doppelgangers. The film premiered at the Toronto film festival.

The idea for the plot came from the director’s long trip to southwestern Iran to see the places where the Iran-Iraq war took place.

“It was a hot summer day and I walked to a local mosque to cool off and rest,” says Haghighi. “The people who ran the mosque had organized an exhibition of photographs from the war years. I was looking at these photos casually and was suddenly overwhelmed by one of them. It was a photo of me, in military uniform, seriously wounded in the neck, carried by two other soldiers. As one of the characters in ‘Subtraction’ says, ‘It’s not like he looked like me, he was my absolute clone!’ I was so confused that I asked others to verify what I saw, and everyone was sure it was a picture of me, except at the time of the war I was much younger than the man in the photo, I was just a 10 year old kid. It was appalling and completely strange, and it was a very familiar kind of terror: it reminded me of what it’s like to live in Tehran, where you are constantly confronted with events that seem completely unreasonable to you, every day , everywhere, and yet you’re supposed to live with them and tolerate them and pretend they’re normal.

The plot centers on two actors each playing two roles. Haghighi chose Taraneh Alidoosti and Navid Mohammadzadeh, two of Iran’s biggest stars. He notes, “My main reason for choosing them was that they are very nice and simple people, very easy to get close to and spend time with. My rehearsal process usually takes a long time. I write my final project after casting the film and I rewrite the script in depth for the specific actors I have chosen. It is therefore not enough for them to be good actors. It should be easy to hang out with them and be friends with them. And these guys are.

You would think that developing and differentiating their two characters would be quite difficult, but Haghighi disagrees. “I was adamant that that shouldn’t be their concern, because I knew the specific plot and dramatic situations would sort that out,” he says. “I didn’t want them looking for a certain tic, or a certain character walk, or a particular tone of voice. I asked them to think about the problems each character faces, how they react to the problem, and the decision they make about it. The script, makeup and costume design would take care of the rest. Once I managed to convince the actors of this, everything became easy and relaxed and a bit old-fashioned: what’s the problem? How do you feel ? What are you going to do about it?”

Haghighi, who also works as an actor, was born into a family that works and creates art. His mother is a gallery owner and his father a director of photography. Her grandfather is the famous filmmaker Ebrahim Golestan and her uncle is the photojournalist Kaveh Golestan.

Like the work of Iranian New Wave director Dariush Mehrjui, about whom he directed two documentaries, Haghighi’s films are all very different from each other, but they bear his subtle and ineffable signature. “Most directors of my generation in Iran are terrified of tarnishing their brand image and they keep making the same movie over and over again. I can’t imagine how they can survive the boredom,” says -he.

Although all of Haghighi’s films are set in Iran, his Iranian-Canadian identity is very important to him. “I went to high school and college in Ontario, got married and divorced there, and some of my closest friends live and work there and I’m in daily contact with them. I also studied philosophy in Canada, and some of the people who taught me were huge cinematic influences, in a roundabout but important way,” he says.

Haghighi’s first experience at TIFF dates back to 1984, at the age of 15, when he saw two films that blew his mind: Leos Carax’s ‘Boy Meets Girl’ and the Coen Brothers’ ‘Blood Simple’. “I already knew I wanted to be a filmmaker back then, but I decided to premiere my films in Toronto when the time came. And it’s pretty amazing and totally wonderful that I finally get to do that, almost 40 years later,” he says.

The film was acquired by Diaphana in France (in association with Kinovista) and September Films in Benelux. Films Boutique, the Berlin company of Jean-Christophe Simon, co-produced “Subtraction” and represents the film on international markets.