Director's Comment:

If Hafez Wrote a Haiku for Cowboys (2024) 

How it came into being...

In December of 2018, I landed at the Tehran International Airport, not knowing if I could even pull out my camera on the street without being detained. Two days later, after a little acclimation and with encouragement from local artists, I started filming on the street. I worked with non-professional actors to imagine scenes and episodes that could come to life with minimal pre-production. Then I pushed it further. I started filming on the subway, in the mosque, and at the market, whereupon I did not stop. I could not stop. 

At one point on the outskirt of a seaside town, a truckload of Iranian soldiers showed up with AK47s slung over their shoulders. I was summoned to a nearby military base for interrogation. That did not stop me either. The Iranian people I befriended believed in me, and stood by me. I kept filming until five hours before my departure. 

What I expected turned out to be true; Iran inside was nothing like what you'd imagine from the western news media coverage. Iranian cinemas gave me far more accurate reference to my experience. People I met were open-minded, friendly, intelligent, fashionable, and generous (sometimes excessively so). 

On one domestic flight, I sat next to a fully garbed imam who immediately invited me to his house. It's in their DNA. Many Iranian people will go out of their ways to protect and nourish guests traveling from afar. I left Iran with a determination to pack this experience into a new feature film. It was going to be a large undertaking, and I also wanted this film to bear testimony to my diasporic filmmaking life. 

I was eighteen when I left Japan. Ever since, I've lived in places where I had no innate community to call my own. As such I survived on the generosity and curiosity of others who wanted to take me in. This trained me to become a traveler. When I accepted my vulnerability and took risks with right intentions, serendipitous encounters often blessed my path and protected me.  

During the U.S. screening tour with my last documentary film, I was given a crash course on human lives . On the road and in the restaurants, people confided with me episodes of profound life events from their past. These intimate conversations altered my perspective on life. I was entering my mid-40s then. I finally learned I could never assume anything about anyone.

Encounters with people's real stories are the greatest blessings I've received as a diasporic filmmaker. And the conclusion is the ultimate cliché; we're all the same. But this truth turns stale unless it is experienced anew; unless people are pushed through the discomfort of getting to know strangers who add no merit to our lives. Bringing this enchanting discomfort to the screen became my vision for this film. 

News outlets tell us our world is perpetually torn apart. Arrogance of the status quo feeds the menace of our society through ignorance. None of this I can control. But I can make a movie that renders arrogance and judgement irrelevant -- at least for two hours. By the end of this film, if you felt comfortably confused about our identities and geographic associations, and felt strangely nostalgic about these foreign lands and their residents, then probably I accomplished something important. 

-- Masahiro Sugano, Filmmaker [November, 2023]