A Play for Freedom

Making theater in Iran is a risky business. In this road movie, four young actors from Tehran travel the country in a colorfully painted truck, putting on a show for children in remote areas. The truck is their means of transport, their place to sleep and their stage. The film crew attends the rehearsals in Tehran, records the visits of the State Commission that has to determine if the play is acceptable, follows conversations between the members and accompanies the company on tour. For the actors, the trip is an exploratory voyage through unknown parts of the country, and for most of the children in attendance, this is their very first encounter with theater. Oppression is an important theme in the play, but it's also the leitmotif of the film, and as the group travels on, deeper mechanisms of censorship come into play, mechanisms that smother the freedom of expression in far more subtle, effective and painful ways.