North American Premiere
Under Iranian law, from elementary school, boys and girls attend school separately. But in kindergarten and preschool there is no gender division. Numb follows a handful of boys and girls in their last year of pre-school as they learn to navigate gender whilst imitating the world of adults through make-believe and childhood games. Roham, the protagonist, is a six-year-old boy whose innocent love for classmate Rana and his curiosity about her shy and reluctant personality unravel dark and horrifying secrets of her life. Amir Toodehroosta beautifully depicts the innocence that exists in childhood, even in a society where religion and pain cast a constant shadow. The filmmaker does not force these issues but allows them to surface through the gaze of this six-year-old boy who tries to make sense of the world and his place in it. The film’s stunning cinematography transports us directly into the world of childhood, as we see things through their lens not only conceptually but technically.
Ayhan Shaygan, Shabnam Dadkhah, Nora Hanifeh Zadeh, Rayan Razmi
Iran
2022
Focus
In Farsi with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Executive Producer
Sina Sharbafi
Producer
Amir Toodehroosta
Screenwriter
Amir Toodehroosta
Cinematography
Soroush Alizadeh
Editor
Maysam Samadi Bahrami
Original Music
Fardin Khalatbari
Director
Amir Toodehroosta
Amir Toodehroosta, an Iranian independent artist and filmmaker, was born in 1982 in Iran. He studied filmmaking at IYCS and Theater at Sooreh University. He has made two documentaries and seventeen short films which have been selected and awarded in many festivals. His first feature film Paat was selected for various international festivals including Warsaw and Tokyo. Numb is his second feature.
Filmography: Paat (2013)
Missing VIFF? Check Out What's Playing at the VIFF Centre
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
Once Upon a Time in Harlem splices together footage shot by William Greaves in 1972 of a group of Harlem Renaissance luminaries in conversation at Duke Ellington’s townhouse. The film is a living archive of memory, disagreement, style, and Black genius.
Get Out
Guess who's coming to dinner? Daniel Kaluuya is the Black boyfriend justifiably anxious about meeting his white girlfriend's folks for the first time in Jordan Peele's satiric modern horror classic, one of a series curated by our VIFF+ Premium members.
Possible Love
Lee Chang-dong’s first film since Burning (2018) is a sardonic, slow-burning satire about two couples: a documentary filmmaker married to a wealthy businessman, and a working-class family struggling to make ends meet after the husband has been laid off.
The Haunting
Directed by Robert Wise in 1963, The Haunting is a classic exercise in the suggestive power of cinema, adapted from Shirley Jackson's 1959 best-seller, The Haunting of Hill House, a provocative blend of supernatural and psychological horror.
A. Rimbaud
Patrick Wang (The Bread Factory) presents the life of French poet Arthur Rimbaud in this staggeringly adventurous and deeply considered movie, a three-hour, one-man show quite unlike anything we have seen before. "Poetic, audacious and singular."