Main Slate
I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies
Mani Haghighi
World Premiere
Unorthodox Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi’s lively, stimulating documentary profiles Nasser Bakhshi, a painter, conceptual artist, collector, and curator—and some would say hoarder—whose monumental archive creates a record of collective memory. Preceded by Kleber Mendonça Filho’s South of Tehran.
- Runtime
- 76 min
- Country
- Iran
- Language
- Farsi,
Turkish - Year
- 2026
- More information
- Official film page
Screenings
Among contemporary Iranian filmmakers, Mani Haghighi stands out for his refusal to conform to easy categorization or genre. His latest is a lively, stimulating, and unorthodox documentary about Nasser Bakhshi, an Iranian painter, conceptual artist, collector, and curator—and some would say hoarder—whose monumental archive of found objects and recovered non-official historical documents, from the pre-Islamic era to today, creates a sui generis record of collective memory. Situated in the northwestern city of Tabriz, Bakhshi’s museum-archive speaks to the need for individual stories, often erased by authority, to paint the larger picture. His collecting process—excavating, labeling, storing, archiving—is both an artistic and political act, one that, as Haghighi shows, inevitably intersects with Iran’s ongoing war with the U.S. and Israel. In profiling Bakhshi, alongside his partner, Roghayeh Najdi—whose surrealist paintings complement his work by commenting on the place of women in Iranian society—Haghighi comes up with a distinct visual language, one that feels in dialogue with filmmakers from Bergman to Parajanov.
Preceded by:
South of Tehran
Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2026, Brazil/U.S., 8m
Farsi with English subtitles
World Premiere
South of Tehran. Courtesy of Kleber Mendonça Filho.
South of Tehran is the first film in the new NYFF Encounters initiative, a commissioning program that invites a filmmaker in the lineup to create an original short during the course of the festival. This prismatic reflection on cinema and memory emerged from conversations between Kleber Mendonça Filho (The Secret Agent) and Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident), both of whom screened films at the 2025 New York Film Festival.
Among contemporary Iranian filmmakers, Mani Haghighi stands out for his refusal to conform to easy categorization or genre. His latest is a lively, stimulating, and unorthodox documentary about Nasser Bakhshi, an Iranian painter, conceptual artist, collector, and curator—and some would say hoarder—whose monumental archive of found objects and recovered non-official historical documents, from the pre-Islamic era to today, creates a sui generis record of collective memory. Situated in the northwestern city of Tabriz, Bakhshi’s museum-archive speaks to the need for individual stories, often erased by authority, to paint the larger picture. His collecting process—excavating, labeling, storing, archiving—is both an artistic and political act, one that, as Haghighi shows, inevitably intersects with Iran’s ongoing war with the U.S. and Israel. In profiling Bakhshi, alongside his partner, Roghayeh Najdi—whose surrealist paintings complement his work by commenting on the place of women in Iranian society—Haghighi comes up with a distinct visual language, one that feels in dialogue with filmmakers from Bergman to Parajanov.
Preceded by:
South of Tehran
Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2026, Brazil/U.S., 8m
Farsi with English subtitles
World Premiere
South of Tehran. Courtesy of Kleber Mendonça Filho.
South of Tehran is the first film in the new NYFF Encounters initiative, a commissioning program that invites a filmmaker in the lineup to create an original short during the course of the festival. This prismatic reflection on cinema and memory emerged from conversations between Kleber Mendonça Filho (The Secret Agent) and Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident), both of whom screened films at the 2025 New York Film Festival.