Into the Jaws of the Ogre

Siavash Karampour is a tall, gangly man with a wild mass of black hair and a restless spark in his eyes. He was once the charismatic frontman of The Yellow Dogs, a well-known band in Tehran’s small underground punk-rock scene. The band appeared in Bahman Ghobadi's No One Knows About Persian Cats (2009), which screened in Cannes. In the aftermath, Siavash and his bandmates were forced to leave Iran. They ended up in New York, where a tragedy claimed the lives of two band members. Siavash’s sister Mahsa, meanwhile, had left Iran and settled in Paris.

Into the Jaws of the Ogre follows filmmaker Mahsa Karampour’s attempts to reconnect with her brother. Uprooted and living on opposite sides of the world, the siblings have built different lives, putting them at risk of losing each other. Structured as a road movie with flashbacks interwoven into the narrative, the film unfolds through a melancholic voice-over, exploring the deep bond between brother and sister, the struggle to find a sense of belonging in an unfamiliar and sometimes hostile environment, and the refuge and solace that music can offer.