Development (2022)

Young Iranian director Salef Kashefi creates a poetic diary out of pieces of his life in Paris. Graceful young faces filmed ever so tenderly, the golden radiance of religious paintings, trivialities of a disjointed daily life overtaken by a gnawing sadness… Each shot is a note whose vibrancy is only enhanced by the sound material, as a ghostly double, made of thick silences and repetitive motifs, melodic apparitions and echoes. Development is the translation on film of a melancholy that is sensitively distilled from the bottom of a bathtub. (Claire Lasolle)