Poetry with the
Taste of Ice Cream
Filmed in Iran. Broadcast for over a decade. Now with English and German subtitles for the first time.
Through informal gatherings, spontaneous recitations, pauses, laughter, hesitation, and contradiction, the film captures fragments of a spoken culture of poetry that now feels increasingly fragile and distant.
In Iran, poets and ordinary men gather to speak about poetry, love, satire, religion, wine, and memory — revealing how verse continues to shape everyday life long after certainty has disappeared.
Synopsis
Poetry with the Taste of Ice Cream follows informal gatherings, conversations, and spontaneous poetry recitations among people whose lives remain deeply intertwined with Persian poetry.
Between tea, laughter, memory, satire, religion, longing, and contradiction, the documentary gradually reveals a world where poetry no longer belongs only to books, but survives within everyday language and social life.
The people in the film constantly contradict themselves. In one moment they defend morality and tradition; in the next they celebrate satire, forbidden desire, wine, or emotional vulnerability.
Rather than presenting poetry as something sacred or distant, the film observes how people continue to use it to explain themselves, hide themselves, entertain one another, mourn, argue, and survive.
Broadcast History
Broadcast for more than a decade on BBC Persian and Voice of America Persian — reaching Persian-speaking audiences across the world.
Languages & Subtitles
Original Language: Persian (Farsi)
Subtitles available in English and German.
Links
I did not make this film to explain poetry.
This film is not an attempt to analyze Persian literature or document the history of poetry. What mattered to me were the people themselves — people in whose voices, jokes, fears, contradictions, and even silences, poetry still continues to live.
In many of the conversations throughout the film, poetry is no longer something sacred or distant. It has entered everyday life; it sits beside tea, laughter, memory, satire, wine, religion, loneliness, and longing. Sometimes people use poetry to hide themselves, sometimes to come closer to one another, sometimes to resist, and sometimes simply to endure.
What fascinated me was precisely this instability. The people in the film constantly contradict themselves. In one moment they defend morality, and in the next they cross those same boundaries. They move back and forth between faith and doubt, tradition and desire, seriousness and humor. I did not want to correct or judge these contradictions. I wanted them to remain exactly as they are.
Formally, I tried to make the film observe more than explain. The pauses, stutters, sudden laughter, incomplete memories, and scattered recitations were as important to me as the poems themselves. For this reason, the film relies more on presence, voice, and the flow of conversation than on a conventional interview structure or narrative form.
Perhaps what remains in the end is not the poetry itself, but the people who are still trying to keep something alive within themselves through a few verses, a few memories, and a few jokes.
Written, Directed & Researched by
Mobarez Javanmard
Camera
Hadi Nazarian
Mobarez Javanmard
Edit
Mobarez Javanmard
Production
Mobarez Javanmard
Hadi Moshtaqan
Amirhossein Dibaj
Hossein Karkan
Director
IMDb
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