OVER MY DEAD BODY Film Review — Love and Respect Do Battle

Meital Cohen Navarro – writer, director and producer of OVER MY DEAD BODY – provides just one relaxed moment in her short film about an Iranian-Jewish family in Los Angeles. While the opening credits roll, spirited Persian music plays, sumptuous sweets fill a table and hot tea pours into pretty glass cups. Then the film begins and so does the nonstop tension.

Isfahan (Natka Pahlevan) and her boyfriend Kambiz (Ash Dadvand) sit silently across the spread of Persian treats as Isfahan’s 70-something parents Sarah (Mary Apick) and Parviz (Bahram Vatanparast) wait for the young people to speak. Finally, they do. They’re getting married.

Rejoicing follows – that is, until Isfahan reveals that Kambiz is Muslim. Secretly, Sarah and Parviz’s daughter has been dating beyond the cultural fence of their Iranian-Jewish circle. As if passing age 30 without a spouse wasn’t bad enough, Isfahan now humiliates her immigrant parents with her blasphemous intimacy.

OVER MY DEAD BODY is 23 Minutes of High Tension

The spacious LA home, decorated with Middle Eastern flare, erupts. Though Kambiz humbly declares, “Your daughter means the world to me,” Parviz sends him quickly out the front door. After all, he had to flee his beloved Iran simply because he was Jewish. When Isfahan’s older brother Ezra (Afshin Katanchi), a successful entrepreneur, and sister Rachel (Mahsa Shamsa), unhappily married to a doctor, join the fray from their hardened roles in the family dynamic, the pain level rises even further.

Isfahan’s love for Kambiz is no match for her parents’ demand for respect. “I taught you to walk, to speak, to think!” cries Sarah, dismissing her adult child’s need for independence. “Real love is between parents and children, not between a husband and wife,” Parviz insists.