Appealing to one and all

Masoud Dehnamaki's office is no longer made up to resemble the front line of the Iran-Iraq war, with sandbags, helmets, and gas masks — and a sign requiring preprayer ablutions before entering.

And few hints remain that this slight, black-bearded former militant was once a leader of violent vigilantes called Ansar-e-Hezbollah. In the late 1990s, he wielded a club — and the pen of the hardline newspapers he edited — to provoke lethal clashes with students and to attack reformists.

But Dehnamaki is a serial iconoclast and remains so even as he shifts targets.

Today those right-wing credentials are enabling the war veteran-turned-film director to challenge prevailing myths about the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, an event that defined Iran like no other since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Perhaps only Dehnamaki, among the pantheon of Iran's gifted film directors, could get away with the irreverent portrayal of the war in his film Ekhrajiha (The Outcasts).

In taking that tack, he reveals how the sanctity of the “sacred'' war, as the conflict is called in Iran, is being redefined.

“The message is that this country is for everyone, with different political tendencies,'' Dehnamaki says.

“It's breaking the clichés. Many people did not like that,'' he says of the film. “In Ekhrajiha, we knew how to play with those red lines [about the official version of the war], but did not cross them.''

Such political moderation was once sacrilege to Dehnamaki. “When you see some people here dressed in American-style clothes, you are seeing the bullets of the West,'' he had said in an interview.

Dehnamaki's leap across Iran's political divide — from hidebound regime enforcer to the director of a groundbreaking film that raked in a record $1 million in 28 days — hasn't been easy.

The director had already raised conservative hackles with two documentaries, one exploring a taboo subject in Poverty and Prostitution.

Ekhrajiha also brought stinging criticism from many quarters and Dehnamaki's former Ansar-e-Hezbollah comrades even made their own documentary to counter the film.

Even before he directed Ekhrajiha, The New York Times noted that Dehnamaki's outspoken documentaries had made him “Iran's Michael Moore''.

He told the paper he had made mistakes in the past by blaming people instead of “our rulers, who have become used to corruption and cannot fulfil the promises of the early days of the revolution about social justice and equality''.

Breaking clichés

Dehnamaki refused to take the prize for the Audience Favourite film at the prestigious Fajr Film Festival last year, saying he wanted more recognition for his crew. But armed with popular kudos, the director is preparing to break new ground again.

A sequel that will have the largest cast in the history of Iranian cinema is under way. The project has grown further into a trilogy of full-length films — an Iranian first.

“Even when I was a member of Ansar, I was a cliché-breaker,'' Dehnamaki says. “I tried for everything to be real, to show the reality of the war. When you show fear alongside bravery and defeat along with victory, people will accept it.''

The story is based on the young men Dehnamaki led at the front, a motley crew whose victory — sometimes measured in terms of survival against a superior Iraqi force — speaks to the wider beliefs veterans hold about the war.

“We resisted eight years and defeated the enemy,'' Dehnamaki says. “This is a source of pride for every Iranian.''

Cloaked in comedy, Ekhrajiha tells of a gang member named Majid who gets out of prison and explains his absence by pretending to be returning triumphantly from the pilgrimage to Makkah.

But he is found out and the woman he loves dismisses him as unworthy. Majid and several friends — irreverent misfits, junkies and thieves who are disdainful of the official revolutionary zeal of the time — decide to prove themselves by signing up to fight.

The men are challenged by religious men as they try to sign up and are tested. How often have they been to Friday prayers? “I went, but was caught in traffic and arrived at 3pm, so it was closed,'' replies one. “They said to come back on Saturday.''

When the men finally make it to the front, they are dismissed by those who are ready to become martyrs and fight in God's name.

“Their presence destroys the order of the war,'' one officer confides to another.

In the process, Majid is transformed. He risks his life, stepping across a minefield that has claimed several soldiers. Some of those who appeared to be much more religious turn out to be cowards or weak.

“God, why did you bring me here to show me that they changed and I didn't?'' implores one religious man who hides during a firefight. “God, you've won.''

There was even a scent of subversion on the set, according to a “behind the scenes'' film made by Dehnamaki that can be bought on the street.

“Look, my whole body is trembling for the sake of these dialogues that are given to us,'' complains one older actress, worried about controversy and unaware the camera is recording.

She says she took the job for the “lowest wage'' to pay for her own trip to Makkah, swears “upon the Quran'' that she is not the kind of person who would normally say such things and then hopes the film will finally not be a approved by Iran's official censors.

“This is all the work of Dehnamaki,'' the actress says. “In this job you do not even have one moment of peace. Every moment your heart is about to sink, [expecting] they are going to come and arrest us.''But the film has had a spellbinding effect on its audience.

Dehnamaki provided a “recipe of salvation'', says one veteran observer, for Iranians deeply divided between hardliners — many of them veterans who look down on those who did not make similar sacrifices — and reformists, who deem the war a historical footnote with little connection to their Western-leaning lives.

“In the audience you had all-chadored women, and bad-hejabi girls [with loose head-scarves],'' the observer says. “He brought them together, side by side.''