“Outcasts 3” jokes with everybody: director

“I am ready to cope with any censure,” Masud Dehnamaki said during a press conference at Tehran’s Nur Shopping Mall, where shooting for the film is currently taking place.

“The Outcast 3” mimics Iranian candidates campaigning in the atmosphere of the June 2009 presidential election.

Reza Ruigari plays the role of a candidate, whose wife, played by Behnush Bakhtiari, appears as his aide during the presidential campaign. The couple is associated with Zahra Rahnavard and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the major rival of Ahmadinejad in the June 12, 2009 presidential election.

Dehnamaki said that he has joked with the ordinary people in previous sequels of “The Outcasts”. He believes that he is joking with politics in “The Outcasts 3”, expressing his hope that politicians show tolerance.

“In ‘Outcasts 3’, we engage everybody; from the left to the right, from the pressure groups to the groups under pressure, from us to you,” he said.

“Joking with Dr. Ahmadinejad is an extraordinary thing that occurs in the film,” he noted.

“I met him and I told him that we have joked with you in the film, particularly about the debates on TV (during the presidential campaigns), I hope it would not offend you,”

“I think Dr. Ahmadinejad will be the only one who won’t be upset by the humor,” said Dehnamaki, who as a filmmaker is considered to be an insider within Iranian ruling circles.

Dehnamki was one of the people rumored to be among President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s candidates for the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance in the former administration in 2005.

Due to their close friendship with Dehnamaki, many high-ranking Iranian officials including the minister of culture and Islamic guidance and his assistant have met with him on location when he was shooting the previous sequels over the past three years. However, Dehnamaki deems himself an independent filmmaker.

“The Outcasts 3” is scheduled to premiere during the 29th Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran in February.

Dehnamaki’s debut film “The Outcasts” was about a group of gangs that head to the front during the Iran-Iraq war.

“The Outcasts 2” followed the group after being captured by Iraqi forces. It became a box office hit, generating revenues of about 30 billion rials (about $2.8 million).

His “Poverty & Prostitution”, a documentary focusing on Iranian women engaged in prostitution due to poverty, never premiered in Iran. However, bootleg copies of the film were selling like hot cakes on the black market.

He made the film in 2002 saying that he wanted to show the crisis of justice in Iranian society through the documentary.

Afterwards, he made “Which Blue, Which Red?”, a documentary on the rivalry between the Iranian capital’s two football teams, Esteqlal and Persepolis, and their fans.

He was formerly the managing director and chief editor of the weeklies “Shalamcheh” and “Jebheh”, which covered subjects on the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

Photo: Behnush Bakhtiari plays the role of the wife of presidential candidate Akbar Dabbagh (Reza Ruigari), in a scene from “The Outcast 3”. She has a campaign motto of her spouse, “Woman Equals Man”, written on her hands. (Photo by Babak Borzuyeh)