Mohammad Shirvani’s Cesarean Weekend is an underground LGBTQ+ film telling the story of two lovers, Milad and Armin, as they gather with friends for a weekend of parties and long conversations. The film was presented at the Berlinale in 2026, and the team is now seeking distribution. In Iran, Shirvani says, it will most likely circulate on the black market and online, as so many other films do, rather than get an official release.
How did the actors get involved with the project?
Like in life itself, some characters gradually and unexpectedly appear, leave an impression, and then become part of your journey – or end up playing a role in one of your projects. For instance, Nader [Mashayekhi, the film’s composer, who also plays the father in the film] and I would often run into each other at parties. One day, I realized, I need a father, and he’s the one. So I called him and said, “My fictional son needs a father. Will you be the one?” He said, “I’m coming.” And just like that, he became the father of my son. I guess that’s the best way to cast.
Was it always the plan to name the characters after the actors who play them?
The film is fictional, but I wanted to give the characters the actors’ real names. That doesn’t mean the real people are similar to their characters. The actors aren’t playing themselves.
Armin is very caring towards Milad, while Milad is more self-centered. What drew you to that dynamic, and what does it reveal about those two characters?
Thanks for mentioning this contrast; it was pretty interesting for Milad and Armin too. Interestingly, the fathers I chose for them reflected a similar contrast. In a strange way, the fathers and sons also resembled one another: Armin and Nader were more introverted, while Peyman and Milad were extroverted. There is some hidden line or boundary in those relationships that I don’t fully understand myself.
It feels as if the protagonists are especially free to express their intimacy in nature. How does the natural setting shape the way you portray their relationship? I feel like nature is where they find each other more authentically.
Nature connects us to where we came from. When people like us, living in the city, go into nature, even for a short time, we feel a freedom we didn’t have before. I usually put the actors – put the people – in an unfamiliar situation. That’s why their reactions to these happenings, these events, are so pure and so new, as if everything is happening for the first time.
Talking about the sequence with the sheep, and the protagonists running in the field: if you pay attention, you’ll see that Armin, the introvert, is only following the lead, just as the other sheep follow the white sheep leading the whole flock. But Milad is somehow confused. I put the actors in that setting, but I didn’t tell them how to deal with the sheep, and that was their choice. I just asked them to experience the extreme limits of freedom.
In the film, we don’t see the sexual relationship between the two men. Was that a political choice? Was it because of the situation in Iran? Why did you decide to leave it offscreen?
It wasn’t because I was afraid that my position in society would be in danger. No, it wasn’t because of fear. As a filmmaker, I’ve been making independent underground films for years now. It’s been a long time, and I completely ignore censorship in my films – and in my life, I have forgotten it. What I was witnessing was a relationship and friendship full of love. What you see in the film was what was essential for me to show. The absence is always stronger than the presence. I do not want to make the audience feel relieved by seeing all the details.
Given the reality in Iran, especially for queer people, do you see a future for them? Is there hope, especially considering the film’s open ending; it does not offer a clear conclusion.
Yes, I am hopeful. I think there is now an increase in the number of women being open, and taboos are being broken every day. They are becoming challenged inside society, and now it’s becoming normalised; the eyes are getting used to it.
The film doesn’t discuss politics openly, but the characters’ lives are very much shaped by the political context. Was it important to keep politics implicit rather than explicit?
I’m sorry, but I didn’t shoot the film today. I shot it two and a half years ago, exactly after the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ uprising [the mass protests that erupted in Iran after Mahsa (Jina) Amini died in the custody of Iran’s ‘morality police’ in 2022], and I was really inspired by that movement. Of course, the more time passes, the more we become courageous. Now, each year, 60 underground films or even more are being made inside Iran.
The question of whether the film is political or not is your decision. We want freedom. We are miserable, we are oppressed, we want freedom. We want to show freedom. I’m not that much of a fan of slogans, but I want to show the freedom. If you want the freedom, you need to visualize the freedom instead of just talking about it. That’s exactly why this type of film is so important for our people: to visualize the freedom in front of them and see it. The West really prefers slogans. Underground filmmakers affect each other inside Iran: one shows one vision of courage, another shows another vision of courage, and we keep visualizing the freedom we want.
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