Jasmine
A story of love and revolution emerging from plasticine...
France, end of the Seventies. Alain is the author of several animated films. His romantic meeting with a young Iranian student, Jasmine, changes the course of his life. Teheran, 1978. The revolution sweeps away the despised regime of the Shah. Alain has joined Jasmine, their love grows in clandestinity, with the hope that a new life is possible. The introduction of the Islamic Republic will destroy their illusions, and separate the two lovers... For how long?
30 years later, it is time for Alain to revisit the theatre of his memory. Several faded blue airgrams, super 8 films... Not much remains. With his fingertips, from the bottom of the heart, he resurrects the past image by image.
In the restitution of a mysterious and oppressive Teheran, in the helter skelter of His- tory, beings of paste and blood fight, like many others, for love and freedom.
»Why would one dream about an old love affair, diving into memories of events that occurred thirty years ago, in a faraway and exotic land? For the great flow of History never stops. A ripple on the distant horizon becomes a wave. Iranians now fighting for democracy are a reverberation from a revolution now thirty years old, in which the Imams overturned the Shah. At the sight of Tehran in turmoil, my mind was flooded with visions of the woman who drew me into an earlier emotional and political maelstrom: Jasmine.
After over half a century on Earth, I have an impressive number of films to my name. My first animated films were made while I was in love with Jasmine. At the present moment, I want to compose an autobiographical film, in which every detail is a magnificent jewel, in a gift to a woman without whom the story would not exist.«
- Alain Ughetto