
Edition: First Cut Lab Montreal 2021
Meezan
Canada, Iran
Production company: Shahab Mihandoust Productions
World Premiere: Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) 2023 – Nouveaux Regards Competition
Award: Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) 2023 – New Visions Award
Set in south-western Iran, in the province of Khuzestan and bordering with Iraq, Meezan is an observational and immersive experience, a journey from the sea to the land, about labor at the margins of petro-capitalism in three chapters.
Departing from the shore of Abadan, the first oil company-town in the Middle East, it follows a group of Arab fisherman who exemplify the realities of maintaining intergenerational ways of living and working on the sea. The men lead us to Bahrakan harbor where they barter for their share of the catch. What is contemporaneously a meeting place for fishmongering was a site of arduous migration for refugees fleeing Abadan after the mass destructions of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980’s. Meezan concludes in a secluded shrimp processing plant on the outskirts of Abadan where women who are shuttled in from surrounding villages furiously peel and devein shrimps in their own race for wages.
CREDITS
Director & Writer: Shahab Mihandoust
Editors: Shahab Mihandoust, Omar Elhamy
Producer: Shahab Mihandoust