Amir Naderi
Cut

THE REVIEW

"Cinema is not a whore"

Amir Naderi, a cult director of Iranian cinema, temporarily relocates to today's Japan to craft the definitive cinematic testament of a devoted cinephile. The cinephile, the author's own alter-ego, is a Japanese director obsessed with saving today's cinema. A cinema afflicted by greed for money, pure entertainment, and special effects. In short: nothing is told anymore that deserves to leave a mark, there's only an effort to astonish with aesthetics for their own sake, with cheap emotions.

Shuji is a cinematic martyr who organizes clandestine film forums, offers himself as a human punching bag to redeem a deceased brother in order to finance independent films. His fragile body that withstands blows is a canvas upon which wounds are painted, from which blood flows: it is the battered body of a cinema losing all hope. Today's cinema is a wounded tiger destined for extinction.

Naderi brings to light a salvific manifesto of violence and honor: punches alternate with visits to the tombs of masters. Yet "Cut" is not a naive and nostalgic film: it is a blunt battle cry, a slow climax leading to the final war. Shuji defenseless, taking a hundred punches for a hundred films. A parade of masterpieces, of names, of inspirations (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Andrei Tarkovsky, Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Georges Méliès, Béla Tarr, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Lino Brocka, David Lynch, Orson Welles, Tsai Ming-Liang, Lee Chang-Dong, Zhang Yimou, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean Vigo, Kaneto Shindo, Charlie Chaplin, Takeshi Kitano, Ermanno Olmi...) that become punches, weapons, resistance. Every piece of cinematic history is a hard blow that cannot succumb to physical violence.

Amir Naderi signs a heartfelt, profound, emotional manifesto, probably destined only for cinephiles capable of recognizing themselves in Shuji's cinematic activism, in his boundless love for cinema, in his desire to live a life dedicated to art. Cinema is the only means that connects Shuji to life, his only purpose to exist (and in this respect, the scenes in which the protagonist, naked, allows films he loves so much to be projected onto him, are revealing - salvific cures for the wounds of his skin).

A romantic act surrounded by an almost sacred aura, with an enormous heart, yet dry, raw, unrefined.

Like a slap.