Love and poaching in a Caspian town

Daniel Nelson 

Now is not the time to tell your parents about me, Amir tells Narges, the woman he is crazy about.

“Why?”, she asks.

“Because I’ve been fired.”

Unemployment puts Amir in the desperate position of many young men in Iran and the Arab world – they are too poor to pay a marriage dowry. 

Alongside Amir and Narges secret meetings, her well-off parents are welcoming suitors for their daughter’s hand, demanding “as many gold coins as the year she was born”.

Fortunately, love-struck Amir is hard-working and resourceful. Less fortunately, these attributes combine with desperation to get him a job on Iran’s northern Caspian Sea coast where he spots an opportunity that draws him into crime.

The drama of his descent – and attempted escape  – is tersely and movingly told in Empty Nets by Iran-born, Germany-trained director Behrooz Karamizade.

He propels the story like a rip tide, so you have an alarming sense of Amir being rapidly swept out of his depth into murky, roiling waters. The characters and situations he meets in his adventure are quickly and vividly drawn: a writer fleeing the police; eel-catching contests in front of a shouting crowd of fishermen gambling away their hard-earned money; his concerned mother; the hard-faced gang leader; litter caught in fishermen’s nets; the quickfire harvesting of caviar.

It presents a stark picture of sharp class divisions, unforgivingly hard work, of the difficulties of holding some sort of moral line in the face of corruption, the ruthlessness of money in a struggling economy. At one point a radio reports economic difficulties because of Western sanctions. Amir switches it off.

The ending is hopeful or hopeless, depending on your standpoint.

+ Empty Nets is showing as part of the Muslim International Film Festival, 30 May- 2 June. Info: London hosts the first Muslim International Film Festival.