Conference of the Birds (2025) by Amin Motallebzadeh

Head coach Dené dies. The film occupies the aftermath — not the succession crisis but the atmosphere: suspended time, restrained grief, latent downfall. Characters unnamed. Scenes unnstitched. The interim coach says through a translator: “I only know what I don’t understand.” The film moves in circles rather than lines. The title references Farid al-Din Attar’s 12th-century Sufi poem — birds questing for a mythic leader discover the leader was always within themselves. Directed by Amin Motallebzadeh — German-Iranian debut. Cinematography by Tom Otte. Score by Nima Khaste. Five languages: English, Turkish, German, Arabic, French. Produced with Tamtam Film. International sales: Shellac Films. World premiere FIDMarseille International Competition July 10, 2025. ➡️ The coach’s death entered the film only after the cast actor withdrew — the absence was already present in footage already shot, making the production accident the film’s most structurally generative available event.

Cineuropa: “highly original and mesmerising — observed from a mystical-realist angle; lifts the veil on the loneliness-infused underbelly of football where spirituality maintains an unexpected presence.” ➡️ Football cinema has never occupied this specific register — the subject matter and formal method are the most commercially unusual available combination in the 2025 festival circuit. In Review Online: “can alternately be difficult to parse and mysteriously absorbing.” ➡️ The “mysteriously absorbing” designation is the most commercially productive available quality signal for the audience most prepared for a film that moves in circles.

• Uniformly somnolent cast — slow speech, minimal expression — draws attention to physical movement rather than emotion. ➡️ Grief rendered as a state of body rather than feeling is the most formally honest available approach to collective mourning.

• Muslim prayer and stretching exercises recur across characters and contexts. ➡️ The same gesture in different situations makes the spiritual and the athletic indistinguishable — the film’s most precise available observation about football’s hidden interior life.

• Five languages in behind-the-scenes liminal spaces reflect both Motallebzadeh’s German-Iranian identity and football’s actual multinational texture. ➡️ The formal decision is autobiographically and socially honest simultaneously.

• The PSG chairman’s name on a telephone screen — real institutional detail within formal abstraction. ➡️ The documentary texture gives the mystical-realist register its most credible available foundation.

Football as subject matter gives the film its most commercially unexpected discovery pathway — football cinema audiences and FIDMarseille experimental audiences do not normally overlap. ➡️ The Attar poem reference reaches Persian literary and Sufi cultural communities independently of any film marketing. ➡️ Motallebzadeh’s own instruction — “don’t try to understand it” — is the most commercially productive available recommendation, converting the most resistant audience into the most receptive one.

• Cineuropa: “fascinating first feature — bewitching.” ➡️

• In Review Online: “spartan, diffuse — mysteriously absorbing.” ➡️

• Letterboxd: “style recalls Angela Schanelec — already an established cinematographic identity for a debut; a filmmaker to watch.” ➡️ The Schanelec comparison is the most commercially specific available framing — placing the film within the most institutionally recognised German arthouse tradition.

• No IMDb score. 1 nomination total.

• Amin Motallebzadeh — German-Iranian debut — built the film without a fixed script, responding to what emerged. ➡️ The semi-improvisatory method explains the formal identity — the absent actor producing the most structurally generative available production event.

• Steven Sowah and Souleymane Sylla within a broader multinational ensemble. ➡️ The line between performer and observed subject is as deliberately unclear as the line between the mundane and the strange.

• Tom Otte (cinematography) — close-ups on faces and bodies giving grief its most physically specific available register. ➡️

• Nima Khaste (score) — central to the mystical atmosphere per Cineuropa. ➡️

Shellac Films positions the film within the most institutionally trusted available experimental arthouse sales infrastructure. ➡️ The football subject extends discovery beyond the experimental cinema community the formal method alone would reach.

Conference of the Birds belongs to the experimental arthouse football tradition — Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait — but with its most formally specific departure: the Sufi allegorical structure applied to collective institutional grief. ➡️ The film treats football not as sport but as a community of belief, making the coach’s death the most formally precise available event for exploring what a system loses when its guide disappears.

• The Attar poem gives the film its most commercially legible available structural argument without stating it. ➡️ The literary reference converts an experimental football film into a philosophical inquiry — the most commercially productive available framing for the FIDMarseille audience.

• The semi-improvisatory build produced the film’s most structurally generative event — the absent actor whose withdrawal made grief the subject. ➡️ The most formally specific films are sometimes shaped most by what was lost.

• Football’s hidden spiritual interior — prayer alongside stretching, multilingual vulnerability in liminal spaces — is the film’s most commercially surprising available subject. ➡️

• Shellac Films positions the film within the most trusted available experimental arthouse sales catalogue. ➡️

• FIDMarseille International Competition is the most commercially specific available platform for films that move in circles. ➡️ The competition placement is the film’s most reliable available discovery credential for the European experimental circuit.

• The experimental football film has established a specialist infrastructure treating the sport as philosophical subject. ➡️ Conference of the Birds arrives in a critical environment already prepared for football as metaphysical inquiry.

• German-Iranian cinema has growing European festival visibility. ➡️ Motallebzadeh’s debut arrives at the most commercially productive available institutional moment for his cultural positioning.

The core audience is 25–55 — FIDMarseille experimental followers, football cinema enthusiasts activated by the mystical-realist angle, and Persian cultural communities for whom the Attar reference is a primary signal. ➡️ The most commercially productive available audience encounter is the one Motallebzadeh described — approach without trying to understand.

The football subject is the most commercially unexpected available bridge to an audience the experimental method alone would not reach. ➡️ The Shellac Films infrastructure and FIDMarseille placement give the film its most commercially complete available institutional foundation.

Cineuropa: “bewitching — spirituality maintains an unexpected presence in football’s loneliness-infused underbelly.” ➡️ Spirituality surfacing within the most commercially secular available sport is the observation that gives the film its most durable available critical relevance. The somnolent method, Sufi structure, and semi-improvisatory production collectively give the debut a formal identity more specific than most first features achieve. ➡️ The Schanelec comparison confirms the formal identity was legible to the circuit most qualified to name it.

Works best approached as Motallebzadeh instructed — without trying to understand it. ➡️ The film rewards atmospheric and sensory engagement more than narrative analysis.

Attar’s birds discover the Simorgh was always themselves. ➡️ The football club that cannot replace its coach is the most formally honest available argument about institutional dependency — the leader whose absence reveals what the group never understood about its own capacity.

The Attar poem and the football club are not analogies — they are the same observation in two registers simultaneously. ➡️ That formal equivalence is what distinguishes the film from every other football film in the 2025 circuit.

Five languages behind the scenes give the film its most socially specific available portrait of professional football as a community of vulnerable individuals. ➡️ The vulnerability is the film’s most commercially surprising available observation — football’s interior as grief and belief rather than competition and spectacle.

Uniform somnolent register across a multinational cast without named characters is the most specific available evidence of debut formal control. ➡️ The ensemble method makes collective grief visible as a shared physical state rather than individual emotional expression.

The Schanelec comparison is the most commercially specific available career signal for a debut. ➡️ A first feature that earns a major filmmaker comparison is the most reliable available indicator of a filmography worth following.

Conference of the Birds proves that the most formally specific football films never show the game — and that Motallebzadeh understood the Sufi poem well enough to build a film where the coach’s absence was already present in the footage before anyone knew it would be.

Conference of the Birds earns its placement through the formal precision that the most serious experimental debuts demonstrate — the somnolent ensemble making grief a state of body, the repetitive motions making prayer and stretching indistinguishable, and the Sufi structure giving the coach’s absence its most complete available philosophical grounding. ➡️ Motallebzadeh’s second film, arriving with this formal identity confirmed, will be among European experimental cinema’s most closely watched available productions.

• Movie themes: Collective grief as suspended time, institutional dependency revealed by the leader’s absence, football’s hidden spiritual interior, the Sufi discovery that what was sought was always within, and five languages as the most socially honest available portrait of professional football’s multinational texture. ➡️ The Attar poem and the football club are not analogies — they are the same observation in two registers simultaneously.

• Movie director: Amin Motallebzadeh — German-Iranian debut — built the film backwards from what emerged, the coach’s death entering only after the cast actor withdrew. ➡️ The semi-improvisatory method is the most honest available description of how a debut acquires a formal identity more specific than pre-determined scripts produce.

• Top casting: Steven Sowah and Souleymane Sylla within a broader multinational somnolent ensemble — uniformly slow, minimal, physically specific. ➡️ Uniform performance register across a multinational nameless cast is the most specific available evidence of debut formal control.

• Awards and recognition: FIDMarseille 2025: International Competition — 1 nomination. World premiere July 10, 2025. Shellac Films international sales. Tamtam Film production. ➡️ The competition placement and Shellac sales are the most commercially complete available institutional foundation for a formally uncompromising debut.

• Why to watch: A German-Iranian debut applying Attar’s 12th-century Sufi poem to a professional football club’s grief — somnolent performances, prayer indistinguishable from stretching, five languages in liminal spaces, and a coach whose death was already present in the footage before anyone knew it would be. ➡️ Approach it as Motallebzadeh instructed — without trying to understand it.

• Key success factors: Attar’s allegorical precision plus football’s unexpected arthouse positioning plus somnolent ensemble unity plus Tom Otte’s close-up cinematography plus Nima Khaste’s score plus the semi-improvisatory method plus Shellac Films’ sales infrastructure. ➡️ The football subject is the most commercially unexpected available bridge to an audience the experimental method alone would not reach.

• Where to watch: Festival circuit via Shellac Films international sales. FIDMarseille world premiere July 10, 2025. ➡️ The Shellac Films infrastructure is the most commercially productive available pathway to the European arthouse theatrical audience most prepared for the film’s formal register.

Conference of the Birds earns its FIDMarseille placement through the formal qualities that the most serious experimental debuts demonstrate — the formal identity established from the first frame, the philosophical structure carried without stating it, and the production accident that became the most generative available creative condition. ➡️ Motallebzadeh’s second film arrives with this formal identity confirmed — the most commercially specific available test of whether the mystical-realist register can be sustained across a filmography at the level this debut already demonstrates it is capable of reaching.