In a line-up dominated by prestige projects and polished international productions, one of the most unexpected and widely discussed feature films at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival was made with a single iPhone, a planted sound mic and no traditional crew.
Mortician by Abdolreza Kahani, premiered in the Competition Features strand and immediately became a point of discussion among filmmakers, programmers and producers — not because of its scale, but because of its emotional impact. The film follows a reclusive mortician who forms a quiet, unexpected bond with a dissident singer in hiding. It’s a deliberate, slow-burn study in which silence often communicates more than dialogue and truth arrives not in climactic monologues, but in minor gestures and shifts in presence.
After the screening, Kahani explained why he felt the need to make the film: “The fact that I created a film is because I’m a director and a filmmaker, so I had to make it. I had to create it. But why this film? The subject was really important. It mattered so much to me and I had to make it right now.”
The minimalist working method, he stressed, was not a compromise but a deliberate artistic position: “I’ve worked with crews of 50 people. But for this story I needed to become small. When you shoot with one little phone and no gear, you don’t direct the film from outside — you’re living it.”
Kahani shot, recorded and edited the entire feature on his own, living for four months together with the actors in order to build the world of the film from within. As he puts it: “It’s harder to act when there is 50 people around you behind the camera and this is not easy, but with the cellphone you don’t feel like there is something watching you and so you act easier. When you make a film with one little little iPhone and no one gathers, you become people. You become small, you become little. You’re no longer that big director with the big camera and it feels totally different. We lived actually together. It was only four of us… making film together. Enjoying together. It was like a small family.”
What might sound like a limitation ultimately serves as the film’s strongest element, creating a sense of unfiltered intimacy and emotional immediacy. At a time when large-scale productions often feel carefully controlled, Mortician presents something closer to lived experience.
