Mahin (Lily Farhadpour), a 70-year-old widow, has been living alone in Tehran since her husband died and her daughter moved abroad, her solitary existence marked mainly by lunches with female friends. At one of these gatherings, the conversation turns to the question of late-in-life romance, and Mahin subsequently finds herself breaking her daily routine with the express intention of meeting a man. An encounter with a like-minded cab driver (Esmail Mehrabi) quickly blossoms into much more than she could have anticipated.
Co-directed by Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, My Favourite Cake is a gentle, humorous meditation on love, loss, and loneliness. But befitting its real-life context—both filmmakers were prevented from leaving Iran to attend the film’s Berlinale premiere—the film is also filled with moments of everyday political resistance. Sweet but never saccharine, it is a film that finds delight in the most fleeting and transitory of moments.
FIPRESCI Prize, Berlin 2024
Lily Farhadpour, Esmail Mehrabi
Iran/France/Sweden/
Germany
2024
In Farsi with English subtitles
At Vancouver Playhouse
At Fifth Avenue
Book Tickets
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits & Director
Producer
Gholamreza Mousavi, Behtash Sanaeeha, Étienne de Ricaud, Peter Krupenin, Christopher Zitterbart
Screenwriter
Behtash Sanaeeha, Maryam Moghaddam
Cinematography
Mohammad Haddadi
Editor
Ata Mehrad, Behtash Sanaeeha, Ricardo Saraiva
Production Design
Maryam Moghaddam, Amir Hivand
Original Music
Henrik Nagy
Maryam Moghaddam & Behtash Sanaeeha
Maryam Moghaddam was born in Tehran. She is an actress, screenwriter and director. She graduated from the Performing Arts School of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has performed in various Swedish theatres and has starred in Iranian films such as Jafar Panahi and Kambuzia Partovi’s Closed Curtain (2013), which won a Silver Bear at the 63rd Berlinale. Behtash Sanaeeha was born in Shiraz. After completing his degree in architecture, he began writing scripts and directing short films, documentaries, and commercials. Behtash and Maryam began their collaboration by co-writing Risk of Acid Rain (2015), which was Behtash’s feature directorial debut and was screened at over thirty international festivals. Their first co-directing project Ballad of a White Cow (2021) premiered in competition at Berlinale.
Photo by Mohammad Haddadi
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Love
This warm, thoughtful piece offers shrewd comic observations on modern dating as it trains a quizzical eye on the trysts of a female doctor, Marianne (Andrea Bræin Hovig), and her colleague, a gay male nurse, Tor (Tayo Cittadella Jacobsen).
Sex
Two chimney sweeps living in heterosexual marriages find their views on sexuality and gender challenged by a series of unexpected events. In a set of sharply scripted conversations, both men confront heretofore unexplored aspects of their identity.
3 Faces
Iranian filmmaker Panahi and actress Behnaz Jafari, both playing themselves, receive a video in which a distraught teenaged girl, whose acting dreams have been quashed appears to kill herself. Panahi and Jafari decide to investigate...
Dreams
The third installment in the Sex/Dreams/Love trilogy is another rich, absorbing tale. 17-year-old Johanne writes a confessional about her flirtation with a (female) teacher. But the writing is too good to stay private...
Transit
Trust the director of Phoenix and Barbara to re-imagine a WWII romantic intrigue into something unsettlingly contemporary. With occupying forces closing in, a German refugee (Franz Rogowski) assumes a dead writer's identity and flees to Marseille.