Under the Cherry Moon: Asgari Lets the Sun Shine In
Ali Asgari continues to highlight the precariousness of navigating modern day Tehran with his latest feature, A Bit of Light, which speaks directly to citizens living day-to-day with the threat of an ongoing war instigated by the United States. As the title indicates, and has been Asgari’s custom, there’s an undeniable sense of hard-won optimism keeping his narrative afloat despite realities which breed apathy or despair. His latest is a bit more of a melancholic journey as it pertains to a doctor, who, upon doing the right thing, finds his carefully curated life in tatters. Seeing no other way out, he decides to kill himself, but not before letting his family know first as a way to mitigate the trauma they will suffer thanks to his decision.
Misagh Zare, the poisonous patriarch of Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024), plays a much gentler persona here as Arash, who is numbly going through the motions of putting his affairs in order. His brother (Ramtin Daghigh) is the first to know of his troubling decision as Arash fusses with ensuring his plants go to a good home and his cat is cared for. His younger sister Mahsa (Sadaf Asgari), who has found yoga as an outlet to process her own emotions due to an abusive relationship with a man she’s not been able to leave, is warned not to lecture Arash. But she has some valid points, affirming “joy and suffering are not enemies.” His older sister Massi (Foruzan Jamshidnejad) is a harder selling point, but she grimly accepts his request to join his other siblings in relaying his plans to their mother (Mina Rahimzadeh) as a united front. However, life starts to get in the way thanks to Massi, whose son is performing in an underground play about a young man trying to leave Tehran but not able to conveniently say goodbye to his mother. Art as a spirit of resistance, the way to get out by clawing one’s way through, is the metatextual message operating within and outside of the film’s frames.
Of course, telling mother seems to be more easily said than done, as she takes pains to prepare Arash’s favorite meal (cutlets) and uniting the family together through love and familiarity. The grim tide of Arash’s determination in what feels like a ‘last supper’ scenario is broken when mom decides to force-feed him watermelon. Perhaps not all is as dire as he supposed? Asgari’s narrative, of course, resembles Abbas Kiarostami’s 1997 Palme d’Or winning title The Taste of Cherry, about a man who also wants to die and desperately wants to find a stranger who will bury him after he’s committed the deed. But it’s harder to face the objectivity of a stranger than the concern of a loved one.
While Arash may be telling everyone he’s certain of his suicidal plan, life seems to think differently. The sense of obligation which ruined him also reminds him of those who still depend on him, including one of the protesters whose windpipe was ripped out by a bullet and may die hiding in his distraught mother’s home. Likewise his cat, which doesn’t seem to want to eat without Arash nearby. The smallest gestures hold the greatest power in A Bit of Light, and nothing works better than a quiet moment where Arash lays his head in his mother’s lap. It recalls Laurie Anderson’s classic, “O Superman,” the electronic pop classic from the early 80s about the false comfort of a tyrannical motherland, but the cruel obliviousness of the state is dissolved through the genuine succor and emotional nourishment from one’s actual mother. It may be slight (as the title does protest, we’re only getting ‘a bit’ of light), but it’s a powerful message about taking a day, a moment, at a time in a world that often seems like it’s only rushing headlong into the dark.
Reviewed on September 9th at the 2026 Venice Film Festival (83rd edition) – In Competition. 87 Minutes.
★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
