Smell of Camphor, Fragrance of Jasmine

Writer-director Bahman Farmanara stars in this melancholy, vaguely comic meditation on tyranny and mortality. He plays an Iranian filmmaker much like himself who has not been allowed by government to make a film for nearly 20 years. He takes an assignment making a documentary on Iranian funeral rites for Japanese television and begins planning his own burial. The story is broken into three acts—“A Bad Day,” “The Funeral Arrangements” and “Throw a Stone in the Water.” A dead baby left in the backseat of his car, a mother with Alzheimer’s disease and the occupation of his pre-paid burial plot by a stranger complicate the life of a man who is more afraid of leading a futile life than dying.