Subtraction

A husband and wife get mixed up with their doppelgangers in this tense Hitchcockian thriller from Iranian auteur Mani Haghighi (Pig, MIFF 2018; A Dragon Arrives!, MIFF 2016).

Driving instructor Farzaneh spies on a person who appears to be her husband, Jalal, heading towards the upmarket residence of another woman. Jalal claims to have been out of town but Farzaneh isn’t placated, so she enlists the help of her father-in-law, who is stunned to discover a man identical to Jalal … with a wife who’s a dead ringer for Farzaneh. Existing on opposite ends of Tehran’s socio-economic spectrum, the couples soon find their lives intertwined in unexpected ways.

Taraneh Alidoosti (The Salesman, MIFF 2016; About Elly, MIFF 2009) and Navid Mohammadzadeh (Leila’s Brothers, MIFF 2022) bring tremendous acting skill to this trippy tale of double identity, each delivering a dual performance that captures life and anxieties within distinct social strata. With this elegant psychological thriller, Haghighi plunges his audience into a neo-noir world in which the city is awash with rain and inhabitants are consumed by suspicion, touching on issues of politics, gender and class through the lens of a macabre mystery.

“A twist-laden doppelgänger thriller … Haghighi pulls off a tonal coup in his direction, giving this the clarity of a waking nightmare.” – Cineuropa