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
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
Agatha's Almanac
Shot over six years on vibrant 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is an artful documentary portrait of filmmaker Amalie Atkin’s octogenarian aunt, who has fashioned herself an endearingly simple and self-sustaining lifestyle on her Manitoba farm.
Follies
After two kids and 16 years of marriage, François and Julie decide to open up their relationship in a bid to rekindle their dwindling sex life. A painfully hilarious and brutally honest depiction of love, sex, and intimacy in the age of the internet.
Paying for It
Talk about a hall of mirrors! Sook-Yin Lee wittily adapts the graphic novel of the same name by her ex-boyfriend, Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown, about the end of their relationship and Brown's subsequent decision to start paying for sex.
Modern Whore
In director Nicole Bazuin's cheeky, stylized documentary, Modern Whore-memoirist Andrea Werhun (Paying for It) recounts her experiences as an escort and stripper in Toronto, debunking misconceptions about the world’s oldest profession.
Dead Lover
A foul-smelling gravedigger's romance ends in tragedy, spurring her to attempt a resurrection through a madcap series of science experiments. Grace Glowicki and Ben Petrie’s film is a zany DIY horror that zaps fresh life into Mary Shelley's classic.