A documentary on mass housing estates in Tehran. Through interviews with permanent inhabitants and visitors, professionals of architecture and non-professionals, juxtaposed with images from Tehran, Shahbazi and Zolghadr ask pertinent questions about the place of the city in the process of globalisation, and carve out a portrait of Tehran as a socially heterogeneous, ever expanding metropolis that does not fit into any existing urban planning or aesthetic standards.

/ Solmaz SHAHBAZI lives and works in Berlin. She studied architecture and design at the Stuttgart Academy of Art and Design. Before venturing into photography and film, Shahbazi worked as an architect. Her works have been shown a the 7th Sharjah Biennial, the 9th International Istanbul Biennial and the 1st Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art. Since 2001, Shahbazi’s works have been exhibited widely in Europe, the United States and the Middle East. Shahbazi uses the documentary format in both her videos and her photography as a tool to analyse different modes of imagery, expectations of the unknown and possible effects on perception.

/ Tirdad ZOLGHADR is a freelance writer and curator based in Berlin. He writes for frieze, Parkett, Bidoun and other publications, and is editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine. Zolghadr has curated events in a wide range of venues, also co-curating the international Sharjah Biennial 2005. He`s a founding member of the Shahrzad art & design collective, and has just published his first novel Softcore with Telegram Books London. Writing and curating aside, Zolghadr filmed and directed the documentaries Tehran 1380 (with Solmaz Shahbazi), winning the Young Filmmaker`s Award of Duisburg 2002, and Tropical Modernism, which premiered at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival 2006. Zolghadr has taught in a wide variety of venues, currently teaching at CCS, Bard College.