.gif)
Award-winning Iranian film-maker Bahman Ghobadi, in Cannes with an underground movie from Tehran, says the country's tight censorship and restrictions mean he "may not go back."
"Everything is dark," he told AFP in an interview Thursday at the film festival. "I'm 40, I don't have a life, I don't have a place. If I go back how can I make a movie? I'm sure they won't give me permission to film."
Festival organisers offered Ghobadi's "No One Knows About Persian Cats" the high-profile Thursday opening slot of Cannes' parallel section spotlighting fresh talent, "Un Certain Regard."
His two-hour movie is a no-holds-barred denunciation of film and music censorship in Iran shot in secret in just 17 days with a mostly non-professional cast working on a shoestring budget.
It was warmly received by critics at a preview screening here.
Shot in dingy cellars, rooftop sheds and even in a country cow-barn, it unveils the existence of a vibrant Tehran underground music scene ranging from indie rock to Persian rap to heavy metal -- with rare images of daily urban life in the backdrop.
Ghobadi, romantically linked to just-released US journalist Roxana Saberi, said that after spending the last three years twiddling his thumbs failing to get authorisation, funding and equipment for a new movie, he had stumbled on the underground music scene, and decided to make an underground movie about it.
Music was already frowned upon by some religious authorities, but some genres, particularly western music, had been virtually outlawed over the last three decades, he said.
"It must be played underground and listened to underground."
"If I hadn't made this movie you wouldn't know what's happening in Iran," he said. "I could make 100 films about these groups, there are many more than I could show in the film."
The film stars a real-life pair of musicians, Negar Shaghaghi and Ashkan Koshanejad, who travelled to Cannes with the director for the festival screening and who also told AFP here they would not return home.
"We just want to live peacefully and make our music," said Koshanejad, who was arrested 18 months ago and spent three weeks in jail. "Everyone is going to leave some day."
"No One Knows About Persian Cats" repeatedly raises the question of whether to stay at home or choose exile and artistic freedom.
Ghobadi, director of auteur award-winners such as "Turtles Can Fly" and "A Time for Drunken Horses," said he had lived in fear of police during the shooting of the film.
"If I go back now they know how I did this, they will follow me."
What was the significance of the title? That in Iran, the film shows, people are not allowed to take their cats or their dogs out in public.
"How can we go back to Iran?" he said. "This is not my first time at Cannes (he was selected twice and won an award for best first feature in 2000) but why I am here this time is so sad."
"I'm lost," he added. "I don't know who I am, whether to stay here or go."
