23 people+1

Sahar Asre Azad

“Twenty-three people” is the second movie- after “the atmosphere station”- of the filmmaker Mehdi Jafari who has the history of producing a documentary collection of the same real subject in his background; a dramatic approach to this issue is drawn by referring to the memories of 23 Iranian teenage soldiers being captured by Iraqi forces during Iran- Iraq war. The film, while exploiting the mastery of the filmmaker to the subject through the creation of documentary series based on the same story, between 1384-1387, which is an important feature of the work, has benefited from a time-passing advantage for the discovery of dramatic interest in the facts. This point should be addressed to the fascinating yet real characterization of Mullah Saleh Ghari and his efforts to help these 23 teenage soldiers; a character who has been ignored over years and now is telling the story of this hero as well. The film, while using the realism and contemporary history, which is only happened 3 decades ago, in the meantime offers a vivid yet bitter picture of camp’s situation in Iraq and at the same time, do not neglect the fact that is has another task which is soothing the situation. The precise characterization of these 23 characters and the setting for a realistic satire, combined with this tragic situation, is one of the privileges that make the filmmaker’s approach in this documentary dramatic and cinematic.