Saw this movie at the Rotterdam film festival (IFFR.COM) 2016. It was part of the official Tiger Award Competition, due to a new policy this year being confined to only eight movies. The latter (competition = festival's flagship) inevitably gives rise to high expectations. Nevertheless, I wonder why this film was chosen. Other festival visitors reasoned along similar lines, and it ended thus on a middle-of-the-road 76th place (out of 178) for the audience award. That said, it was not bad after all, sort of entertaining in its own way.
I must admit that I expected too much, but not all my time was wasted. The movie provided for interesting insights in running a radio station, be it run by Iranians or any other nationality for that matter. The continuous tension between financial issues versus running ads versus providing for interesting content, is relevant for any broadcasting and other forms of publicity too.
Minimal time was devoted to how and why these Iranians and others from various countries left their homes and how much effort it took to integrate. That was apparently not the primary topic of this movie. I think I misconstrued the synopsis on the festival website, and assumed this film intended to study contemporary issues around integration and assimilation of people from abroad. In hindsight the synopsis focused on music and musicians rather than immigration politics after all, so I stand corrected.
