Tashrih (Dissect) | Police Investigate Suspicious Death of a Student | Iranian Short Film

After the suspicious death of a student in the classroom, a boy, the teacher, and his classmates must face police investigations.

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Tashrih (Dissect)
dir. Siavash Shahabi

"Dissect possesses an interesting structure. When the film opens, we experience the altercation from the kids’ perspective, watching them reenact the fight. Omniscience is denied the audience and viewers, like the police, are also trying to gather clues—at this point, the reenactment is all we have. Bypassing conventional exposition, we are thrown into the ongoing investigation and left to pick up information along the way—some, from what is said, but mostly from the characters’ behavior, most notably from the main character of the short, the boys’ teacher.

The mystery of what happened provides enough intrigue to sustain one's attention, and, despite the 20-minute runtime, the pacing of the film creates and maintains effective tension. The screenplay, by Shahabi as well, is smartly structured so that, as the narrative evolves, a switch occurs and the film relies less and less about trying to figure out what has happened and more on the teacher struggling to understand how and why it happened, and to what degree he could have prevented it.

This sense of moral dilemma is a quality that, in our experience, is a hallmark of Iranian short cinema, yet has a distinctive nature in Dissect. The film distinguishes itself by being more about what the instructor has not done rather than his explicit actions. Yet, he can’t shake his sense of culpability in the matter, especially as details of the fight come to light. Alireza Sanifar’s performance as the teacher is quite impressive as he is able to portray how his character processes the trauma and escalating responsibility largely without dialogue. His navigation of the character's inner turmoil provides a resounding authenticity that gives the film a strong emotional impact. - S/W Curator, Céline Roustan

Director: Siavash Shahabi
Producers: Hossein Shahabi, Maryam Koohkan, Sogol Shahabi
Screenwriter: Siavash Shahabi
Cinematographers: Hamed Hoseini Sangari
Editor: Emad Khodabakhsh
Art Director: Shadi Farzaneh
Sound Designer: Mohammad Mehdi Javaherizadeh
Cast: Alireza Sanifar, Tinoo Salehi

Reproduced on this channel with the permission of the filmmakers.

Видео Tashrih (Dissect) | Police Investigate Suspicious Death of a Student | Iranian Short Film канала Short of the Week