Agora Films

Iran | 2025 | 103′ | Color

Awards:

GdA Director’s Award at Giornate degli Autori

Festivals:

Giornate degli Autori – 2025 (Competition)

About the film:

Inside Amir follows a young man in Tehran on the verge of emigrating. Amid scattered memories, unfinished conversations, and slow-moving days, he faces a decision he hasn’t fully made yet: to leave or to stay. The only thing he refuses to part with is his bicycle – a companion through the city’s streets and a symbol of his past. As his departure to join Tara, his girlfriend now in Italy, grows closer, we learn how years ago, their relationship kept him from joining a family trip that ended in tragedy. Tara became more than a partner – she came to represent the life he was spared.

About the director:

Amir Azizi (Ahvaz, Iran, 1984) began his career in film in 2003. He worked as director’s assistant with renowned Iranian filmmakers including Kianoush Ayari and Rakhshan Banietemad. He directed several short films, such as The Idiot (2007), Two Cold Meals for One Person (2009), and Family Portrait (2010), which all screened at national and international festivals. His documentaries, Nature and Cities of Iran (2013), Wolf (2018) and Home (2022) focus on local and environmental themes and received critical acclaim. His first feature, Temporary (2015), was screened at the Beijing International Film Festival and Med Film Festival in Rome, winning a Special Jury Prize. His second feature, Two Dogs (2020), competed at Warsaw and won awards at Bangalore and other festivals.

Press Quotes:

– A keen observation on male vulnerability, Inside Amir has its own rhythm and more than a tinge of melancholy while being very light on plot. The emotional trajectory of its protagonist is more important, as it follows his journey to realizing he has to let go. International Cinephile Society
– Just as the prospect of taking root in one place imposes an uneasiness on the mind, so too does relocation prompt a restlessness of the soul. Neither are absolutes: habituation, some would say, determines the rigor of both provincial and cosmopolitan sensibilities. In Review Online
– It may be episodic but its themes are so well connected that it never feels disjointed. Eye For Film
– An Iranian man preparing for migration refuses to let go of his bicycle, in a meditative drama with echoes of Neorealism and Kiarostami. DMovies