The Cinematheque

Impressively shot in a single continuous take (à la Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark or Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria), Iranian writer-director Mehdi Fard Ghaderi’s first feature spins a tale of six different families on a long train journey through a rainy night. ​“Immortality is a film made in the space between reality and dream. Six parallel stories are narrated consecutively in the passageways and cabins of a train, each story a continuation of the one before and a prelude to the one after. This 145-minute single shot-film was inspired by the film’s dreamlike story, where the mathematical sphere of each story takes shape in the train’s straight passageways, narrated through an old man’s fluid reflections. The single-shot was used to connect the parallel worlds of the film’s stories, each world constructed upon the consequences of fate” (Mehdi Fard Ghaderi).