Iranian young student Shahram and older journalist Abbas as refugees on Netherland's airport decide to impersonate as a gay couple in order to obtain asylum.
Shahram & Abbas (2006)
In this tragicomedy two Iranian refugees decide to impersonate as a gay couple in order to obtain asylum. But for the adventurous, but lonely Shahram and the serious journalist Abbas it is hard to live with their facade to the very end.
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Under the obviously euphemistic title of the gay-themed shorts collection “S is for sexy” one wonders how this poignant little film came along; homosexuality is just a pretext, albeit one that shows how pretexts come in the way, for the short to handle with tact and tenderness a bunch of contemporary issues.
Shahram, a young Iranian, introduces himself to Abbas, an older Iranian, in the airport, after the latter fails to successfully burn his passport. What are the reasons? No matter what Abbas fears, Shahram offers him a deal: that they pass for a couple. If you are gay and Iranian you can’t possibly fail in getting asylum, for they think they beat us to death, as he says.
Things start well, they procure an official document proving their security was threatened by the Iranian state, after Abbas phones his wife, in order that they get one.
In the meantime, they get to know another Iranian, Youssef, and an African young woman, Femi, with her child. The Iranian also claims that he is gay, and to the detriment of the “couple”, he has a keen eye: he points to Abbas that Shahram cannot be gay, due to his amorous attachment to the young woman, and that he is not going to mention anything; all this is half-menacingly, half-soothingly said.
Well, things go wrong: in an interview, Shahram steals in a moment of inattention the electronic pass from their lawyer, so that he can give it to Femi, in order for her to escape, since she failed the interview. And he does, but the whole evening of sneaking around proves a charade, which next day makes Abbas break down and spit everything out to the jury. “I am telling the truth!” he yells.
Anyway, they both get deported, and in the corridor, after having heard that the flight passes via Rome, they pause and ask themselves Rome, what if?
The film offers a tender thesis on misplaced expectation in a state of emergency, even if this means the emergency of political identity, integration, love, betrayal, how it all weighs on our no more personal, not exactly outward either hierarchies, and how intersection of all these issues one into the other just makes the sympathetic, hopeless human custom of interdependency, illusion, hope, and tempting absurdity start allover again.
A short sustained and well made. Thank you
