Higher than Acidic Clouds

Directed by: Ali Asgari

Co-produced with: Seven Springs Picture, Milad Khosravi

In co-production with Manufactura PIctures

Logline:

In a haunting, autobiographical essay, Iranian filmmaker Ali Asgari questions what it means to be an artist, as censorship drains the color from his home city of Tehran, and from his life.

Synopsis:

After the premiere of his film Terrestrial Verses (co-directed by Alireza Khatami) in Cannes, Ali Asgari was banned from traveling. However, filmmakers like Asgari are not easily deterred from practicing their art, despite relentless repressive interference. In stubborn resistance to his growing pessimism about the way his city is developing, Asgari expresses his dreams and reflections in countless apocalyptic shades of gray. He muses about his mother’s native language, his sisters who could never see his films in the cinema, and Rome, where he lived for ten years. But above all, the filmmaker longs to go outside and fly above the city at a height from which all people are equal. He is left with his memories and imagination, the only things that cannot be confiscated.

Ali Asgari’s Biography:

Ali Asgari is a prominent figure in Iranian cinema with more than 200 awards to his name. Two of his short films, More Than Two Hours (2013) and The Silence (2016), were nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Festival de Cannes. His short film The Baby was featured in the short film competition at the Venice Film Festival in 2014. Ali’s films focus on the precarious lives of individuals living on the margins of society in his native country, Iran.

His debut feature film, Disappearance, was developed at the Cinéfondation Residency of the Festival de Cannes and had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival, followed by its North American premiere at the Toronto IFF in 2017. After dedicating his time to creating several other short films, he directed Until Tomorrow, his second feature film, which premiered at Berlinale 2022.

Ali’s third feature film, Terrestrial Verses, a cross-genre film, premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival and was theatrically released in more than 10 territories across the world. Terrestrial Verses has drawn over 100,000 spectators in France and 26,000 in Italy.

His fourth feature film, Higher than Acidic Clouds, is a boundary-pushing hybrid film that has been selected for IDFA 2024. Most recently, Ali Asgari was chosen as a jury member for the Orizzonti section of the Venice Film Festival. Ali is also a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.