A Moment of Innocence
In Tehran, a former policeman in his forties gets in contact with the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, reminding the filmmaker that he had promised him a part in his next movie.
In fact, the two men had "met" 20 years earlier under rather dramatic circumstances: in 1975, the young Makhmalbaf, a dissident under the Shah's regime, stabbed this policeman while trying to steal his revolver. Imprisoned, the future filmmaker was released during the height of the Revolution.
Instead of coming through with a role for the policeman, Makhmalbaf suggests that he prepares a restaging of that politically dramatic moment during '70s Iran from his own point of view as a former law enforcer; Makhmalbaf will prepare his own restaging as well, so that both stories could be woven into a dramatization, which Makhmalbaf and his crew would shoot.
What results is an exercise in perspective and layered dramatic parody: each of the protagonists will have a small film crew and re-create the event as he saw it.
