This film was released 26th March 2010 and is no longer screening.

This undercover portrait of rock musicians in Tehran is both a courageous statement of artistic liberty and scintillating cinema in its own right.

Stymied by delays in getting official approval for his work, Kurdish-born director Bahman Ghobadi (whose previous features Turtles Can Fly and A Time for Drunken Horses have been lauded worldwide) simply took up his camera, got on his moped and started shooting a story about an indie-pop duo trying to buy fake passports and thence realise their dream of playing in London. Trouble is, they need a permit to put on a gig to raise the cash in the first place, and since Western music’s essentially forbidden by the Islamic regime, the threat of arrest hangs over the underground community of musicians who come to their aid. There’s more fact than fiction involved as duplicity and desperation intensify in this soberingly truthful, intensely compelling film. Little wonder many of those we see have since fled Iran. Notes by Trevor Johnston