Namo (2020)

The Kurdish teacher Bakhtiyar has been transferred to a city in the Kurdish-speaking part of Iran and is trying to settle there with his wife and their two young children. But the more often he refuses to display the expected opportunism, the greater the difficulties that arise in his way. One day, a car with two men inside parks on his street. It remains there for hours every day. This unusual occurrence attracts the neighbors’ attention and leads them to suspect that the national security service is conducting surveillance. Everyone feels there must be reasons for them, specifically, to be watched, and they become afraid. Ultimately, however, they come to believe that the surveillance is directed at Bakhtiyar, whose father is a controversial politician. A witch hunt develops with increasing intensity. The neighbors pressure the teacher to make a decision: should he strike back and prove his innocence, or accept the role of victim and leave the city, moving yet again? And on top of all this, he must find a way to fulfill the last wish of his father, who is dying. The film, initially told in a realistic and closely observed style, increasingly becomes a parable-like tale about paranoia, rumors, and the powerlessness of the individual in a repressive system with a dynamic all its own.