"Talking With A Shadow" by Khosrow Sinai (2005)

Talking With A Shadow is a movie about the renowned Iranian writer Sadegh Hedayat.



Sadegh Hedayat



Sadegh (also spelled as Sadeq) Hedayat (in Persian: صادق هدایت; February 17, 1903, Tehran — 4 April 1951, Paris, France) was Iran's foremost modern writer of prose fiction and short stories.

Hedayat was born into a Iranian aristocratic family in Tehran and was educated at Collège Saint-Louis (French catholic school) and Dar ol-Fonoon (1914–1916). In 1925, he was among a selected few students who travelled to Europe to continue their studies. There, he initially went on to study engineering in Belgium, after a year he gave this up to study architecture in France. While there, he gave up architecture to pursue dentistry. In this period he became acquainted with Therese, a Parisian with whom he had a love affair. In 1927 Hedayat attempted suicide by throwing himself into the river Marne, however he was rescued by a fishing boat. After four years in France and Belgium, he finally surrendered his scholarship and returned home in the summer of 1930 without receiving a degree. In Iran he held various jobs for short periods.

Hedayat subsequently devoted his whole life to studying Western literature and to learning and investigating Iranian history and folklore. The works of Rainer Maria Rilke, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, Anton Chekhov and Guy de Maupassant intrigued him the most. During his short literary life span, Hedayat published a substantial number of short stories and novelettes, two historical dramas, a play, a travelogue, and a collection of satirical parodies and sketches. His writings also include numerous literary criticisms, studies in Persian folklore, and many translations from Middle Persian and French. He is credited with having brought Persian language and literature into the mainstream of international contemporary writing. There is no doubt that Hedayat was the most modern of all modern writers in Iran. Yet, for Hedayat, modernity was not just a question of scientific rationality or a pure imitation of European values.

In his later years, feeling the socio-political problems of the time, Hedayat started attacking the two major causes of Iran's decimation, the monarchy and the clergy, and through his stories he tried to impute the deafness and blindness of the nation to the abuses of these two major powers. Feeling alienated by everyone around him, especially by his peers, Hedayat's last published work, The Message of Kafka, bespeaks melancholy, desperation and a sense of doom experienced only by those subjected to discrimination and repression.

Hedayat travelled and stayed in India from 1937 until 1939. In Bombay he completed and published his most enduring work, The Blind Owl, whose writing he started as early as 1930 in Paris. The book was praised by many including Henry Miller and André Breton. It has been called "one of the most important literary works in the Persian language".

At the end of 1950, Hedayat left Iran for Paris. There, on 4 April 1951, he committed suicide by gassing himself in a small rented apartment on 37 Rue Championnet. He had plugged all the gaps in the windows and door with cotton and, so it wouldn’t burden anyone, he had placed the money (a hundred thousand francs) for his shroud and burial in his side wallet in plain view. He was buried at the division 85 of Père Lachaise cemetery. His funeral was attended by a number of intimate friends and close acquaintances, both Iranian and Frenchmen.(From Wikipedia)

Khosrow Sinai

Khosrow Sinai (Persian: خسرو سینایی , born 19 January 1941 in Sari, Iran) is an Iranian film director. His works are usually based on social documentations. He was the first Iranian film director to win an international prize after the Islamic revolution in Iran.He is also known as an Iranian scholar and has been awarded the prestigious 'Knights Cross of the Order of Merit of the Polish Republic'. (From Wikipedia)