Preservation Amidst the Storm: Mani Haghighi’s Unorthodox Portrait of Iranian Memory Debuts at NYFF

The 64th New York Film Festival (NYFF) has long been a sanctuary for the world’s most daring cinematic voices, yet few entries in the 2026 lineup carry a title as evocative or a backstory as fraught as Mani Haghighi’s latest documentary. Titled “I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies,” the film arrives as a monumental exploration of memory, obsession, and the political weight of the physical object.

World-premiering on September 30, the documentary offers an intimate look at the lives of Nasser Bakhshi and Roghayeh Najdi, two artists living in the northwestern city of Tabriz. Through their sprawling, borderline-obsessive collection of found art and historical artifacts, Haghighi crafts a narrative that is part character study and part act of cultural resistance. As the film prepares for its international debut, it stands as a testament to the power of the individual archive in an era of state-sanctioned erasure.

Main Facts: A Sui Generis Record of Collective Memory

At its core, “I Deserve a Lover…” is a documentary that defies the traditional tropes of the genre. Rather than a linear biography, Mani Haghighi—a filmmaker known for his refusal to be pigeonholed into specific categories—presents a "visual language" that critics have already begun comparing to the works of masters like Ingmar Bergman and Sergei Parajanov.

The film focuses on Nasser Bakhshi, a polymath whose titles include painter, conceptual artist, collector, and curator. Bakhshi has spent decades transforming his residence in Tabriz into a museum-archive that houses a staggering array of objects. These range from pre-Islamic artifacts to "non-official" historical documents that have survived the various ideological shifts of the Iranian state. Supporting and complicating this mission is Bakhshi’s partner, Roghayeh Najdi, a surrealist painter whose own work provides a critical commentary on the domestic and social position of women in contemporary Iran.

The documentary is positioned as a highlight of the NYFF Main Slate, a selection that emphasizes Haghighi’s standing in the global film community. The screening will be uniquely paired with a short film by the acclaimed Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho (Bacurau, Neighboring Sounds). Titled “South of Tehran,” the short documents Jafar Panahi’s experiences during the 2025 festival, creating a powerful dialogue between two generations of Iranian filmmakers and their international advocates.

Chronology: Filming Between the Wars

The production timeline of “I Deserve a Lover…” is inseparable from the geopolitical volatility of the region. To understand the film’s urgency, one must look at the specific window in which Haghighi and his crew operated.

• September 2025: Principal photography began in Tabriz. This period followed closely on the heels of the "Twelve-Day War," a devastating conflict involving Iran, Israel, and the United States. Haghighi describes this time as one defined by "mental paralysis," where the traditional coordinates of daily life had been shattered by the scale of the violence.
• Winter 2025-2026: Just months after filming concluded, Iran was gripped by a domestic crisis involving a violent crackdown on protesters by government forces. This "winter massacre" serves as the unspoken postscript to the film, retroactively charging the scenes of Bakhshi’s quiet archiving with a sense of desperate preservation.
• Summer 2026: Post-production was completed as the film was submitted to major international festivals. Films Boutique, the esteemed sales agent, picked up the title for global distribution.
• September 25 – October 12, 2026: The New York Film Festival hosts the film’s world premiere, marking the first time international audiences and critics engage with Haghighi’s vision of the Tabriz archive.

Supporting Data: The Archive as a Political Act

The film argues that Bakhshi’s process—excavating, labeling, and storing—is not merely a hobby or a symptom of hoarding, but a radical political act. In a country where "official" history is often curated by the state to serve specific narratives, the "non-official" document becomes a site of rebellion.

The Tabriz Museum-Archive

Bakhshi’s collection is described as a "monumental archive of found objects." These items are not necessarily high-value antiquities in the traditional sense; rather, they are the debris of history. By preserving items from the pre-Islamic era alongside modern ephemera, Bakhshi creates a "sui generis" (one of a kind) record. This archive serves as a physical rebuttal to the erasure of individual stories.

The Role of Roghayeh Najdi

While Bakhshi focuses on the physical preservation of the past, Najdi’s surrealist paintings offer a psychological preservation of the present. Her work, which Haghighi features prominently, acts as a counterpoint to the male-centric archiving process. Her art addresses the "place of women in Iranian society," ensuring that the documentary captures the gendered dimensions of memory and domestic space.

Aesthetic Influences

Programming notes from NYFF suggest that Haghighi has moved away from the sleek, often satirical tone of his previous features (such as Pig or Subtraction) in favor of a more textured, poetic approach. The comparison to Parajanov suggests a focus on the "materiality" of the frame—treating the film itself as an object in Bakhshi’s collection.

Official Responses: Ceding Control as Liberation

In a poignant director’s statement, Mani Haghighi opened up about the psychological toll of the era and how it influenced the documentary’s creation. He describes a sense of "moronic darkness" that pervaded Iran following the Twelve-Day War, leading to a state where he felt he had no agency over his own life.

"Making this film was about bringing my friends together in the middle of that vast, moronic darkness in order to concentrate on images and words that could still mean something to us," Haghighi stated.

He further reflected on the nature of the subjects’ home, describing it as an environment of "deranged hoarding shaped by obsessive order." Haghighi admitted that as the filming progressed, he realized he was no longer an objective observer. "I wasn’t simply making a film about it: I was entering it and feeding it. But this time, ceding control felt like liberation."

This sentiment has resonated with festival programmers. NYFF’s editorial team noted that Haghighi stands out among contemporary Iranian filmmakers for his "refusal to conform to easy categorization." By embracing the chaos of Bakhshi’s archive, Haghighi found a way to navigate his own artistic paralysis.

Implications: The Future of Iranian Cinema and Distribution

The premiere of “I Deserve a Lover…” carries significant implications for the international film market and the status of Iranian artists.

Seeking U.S. Distribution

Despite the high profile of the NYFF premiere and Haghighi’s established reputation, the film is currently seeking a U.S. distributor. In an increasingly cautious theatrical market, documentaries—especially those with challenging subject matter and long titles—often face an uphill battle. However, the prestige of an NYFF Main Slate slot typically serves as a powerful catalyst for acquisition. Films Boutique’s involvement suggests that European and Asian markets may see a more immediate rollout.

The Politics of Representation

The film’s focus on the "Twelve-Day War" and the subsequent domestic massacres places it at the center of a global conversation about how art responds to conflict. By documenting a couple who refuses to let their history be destroyed by missiles or mandates, Haghighi offers a blueprint for "art as survival." This theme is expected to dominate the Q&A sessions and critical reviews following the September 30 screening.

A New Chapter for Haghighi

For Mani Haghighi, this documentary marks a pivot toward a more personal and perhaps more experimental form of storytelling. While his previous work often used genre—noir, comedy, or thriller—to critique Iranian society, “I Deserve a Lover…” appears to strip away those layers, leaving behind a raw, meditative look at the objects we leave behind and the people who refuse to let them disappear.

As the New York Film Festival approaches, the industry’s eyes are on this "intriguingly titled" documentary. It promises to be more than just a portrait of two artists; it is a cinematic rescue mission for a collective memory that the world, and perhaps the state, might otherwise forget. Through the lens of Haghighi, the "fiery dooms" of the title are met not with despair, but with the quiet, stubborn order of the archivist.