SEE YOU FRIDAY, ROBINSON

2022
97’
France, Switzerland, İran, Lebanon
Colour

See You Friday, Robinson is the chronicle of a filmic encounter, perhaps impossible, between Ebrahim Golestan and Jean-Luc Godard, two major artists who, at least in the West, have not reached the same level of fame.

Much time has passed since the 1960s, and the Iranian new wave has remained largely unknown, overshadowed by the fame of its European sibling. But is it too late to bring together two leading figures from these distant experiences?

“We should start with a correspondence” says Godard, “maybe we will not correspond to one another. Ebrahim can send me a letter this Friday, and I’ll answer him next Friday. So, see you Friday, Robinson!” This is how the film unfolds, sometimes following a linear trajectory, more often taking side roads, punctuated by the disappointed hopes, the brilliant intuitions and the resistance that punctuate the confrontation between the two interlocutors.

Jean-Luc Godard, avoiding the face-to-face confrontation, appears like a ghost every other Friday at Ebrahim Golestan’s house with his messages composed of obscure formulas and enigmatic image montages. Golestan replies, developing his arguments over several pages… Each Robinson, master of his own island and language, follows his singular path on parallels that seem never to cross, but not without signs of reciprocal affection: «My solitude recognises yours,» says Jean-Luc Godard to his alter ego.

Far from passively recording their failure to find a common language, See You Friday, Robinson transforms the exchanges between Godard and Golestan into cinematic material. The fragmentary composition of the film makes one’ sentence resonate with the other’s gesture, weaving day after day a discreet web between two universes of life and thought that perhaps converge towards the same focal point.

From the vast English castle to the tiny space of the house in Rolle, two solitudes face each other and respond to each other: Jean-Luc Godard’s assumed solitude, oscillating between revolt and melancholy, and Ebrahim Golestan’s, opposing a lucid wisdom to the necessity of human destiny.

Special Jury Prize of Encounters Berlinale

Born in 1975 in Tehran, Mitra Farahani is a plastic artist, filmmaker and film producer working between Rome and Paris. She pursues a dual practice working between the still and moving image. Since 2001, her films premieres at the Berlinale. Recent ones reveals traces of creation of artists’ latest works.