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INTERVIEW - KIARASH DADGAR

THE STEAK won a Best Short-Film award in our LCF’s 2nd Edition.


Interview with director Kiarash Dadgar.

 

 



 

What got you into filmmaking in the first place? And how did you come to co-write and direct THE STEAK?

I come from a theatre and performance background, but what drew me into filmmaking was a passion for telling stories in new, innovative forms. I see cinema not as a finished medium, but as an evolving science — it’s only been around for about 150 years, and I believe it’s still developing. I felt I could contribute to that evolution by bringing my own way of looking at the world into the language of film.

The Steak was born from a real image that my co-writer, Ali Narimani, shared with me. During the Iran-Iraq war, a mother and child in the south of Iran were cooking when Iraqi soldiers suddenly invaded. A neighbour ran into their home and shouted, “Why are you still cooking? There are soldiers outside!” The mother looked out the window, saw the soldiers, grabbed her child, and fled. They survived. But what stayed with me was the question: what happened to the food? That detail haunted me. I started thinking — what if we stay with the food inside the house? That moment became the core of the film.

 


How were your cast & crew found?

Most of the cast and crew for The Steak were students and collaborators from Soore Art University in Tehran, where I studied at the time. Around 80% of them worked for free. Over the years, I had acted in many student and independent films without pay, and I saw those efforts as building creative credit — a kind of informal network of trust. When I decided to make The Steak, I reached out to those I had previously worked with, and many of them generously offered their support in return.

We shot the film in Tehran in 2022, just before I moved to Canada. It was a grassroots production, driven by passion and solidarity. Everyone brought their energy and belief in the project, and I’m deeply grateful to them. Post-production took over a year, and the film was officially released in 2023.


 

Your short film is a silent sequence-shot: how then did you work with your actors?

To be honest, I feel very lucky to have had these actors on board. Most of them hadn’t even met each other before the day of the shoot — we didn’t have the budget or logistics to organize full rehearsal sessions in advance. Everyone arrived on set in the morning, and we used the hours before shooting to walk through the sequence and rehearse. We assigned specific entrance cues and actions to each actor, which created a kind of structured, mechanical rhythm — almost like a stage performance.

Because the film is a silent one-shot, I drew heavily from my theatre background. I’ve acted in many plays and worked with seasoned directors, so I understood how to use presence, timing, and intention without relying on dialogue. The choreography of bodies in space was essential.

My assistant directors played a crucial role in managing the movement of actors, especially the soldiers and background performers in the street scenes. I was fully focused on the monitor to ensure the camera captured what we needed, while my first assistant director, Arian Hosseini, who had experience on major Iranian television series, coordinated timing and crowd control. Despite the limited resources, his support was invaluable in keeping the sequence tight and alive.

 


When & where was THE STEAK shot, and how much time did you have?

The Steak was shot in 2022 in Tehran, Iran, at a location known as Ghazali Cinema Town — a production backlot built specifically for film and TV shoots. The houses you see in the film aren’t real structures; they’re just façades with nothing behind them. It was the best possible option for us visually, but it took time to secure the necessary permissions and finalize the location. Since this is a location-based film, I had written the story with a very specific environment in mind, and it was challenging to find a location that matched that vision.

We didn’t have much time — I had a one-way ticket to Canada for about three weeks after we greenlit the project, so we had a tight three to four-week window to prep and shoot. The film was shot in a single day. We spent some pre-production time preparing the location — building the set, decorating the house, and arranging logistics — but most of the actor direction, entrances, and movement cues were set on the shooting day itself. Despite the constraints, the team pulled together to make it happen.

 


In total, how many steaks were used?

We bought two steaks and used both during the shoot. The first appears in the opening frame of the film, and the second is what you see in the final shot. Because the film was shot in a single take, we had to precisely plan the steaks' use. They ended up being among the most expensive props on set, which says a lot about how low-budget and resourceful the production was overall. All the cooking scene in the beginning was done in the VFX, because we didn’t want to damage the camera.

 


Do talk about THE STEAK’s postproduction!

Post-production was by far the hardest and longest phase of The Steak. After we finished shooting, the Women, Life, Freedom movement erupted in Iran, and many people in the industry, including post-production professionals, paused or stopped their work. By then, I had already moved to Canada and didn’t even have access to the hard drive or raw footage for months, and the internet wasn’t available in Iran during that period. Everything had to be coordinated remotely, which made things even more complicated.

I stayed in close contact with my collaborators in Iran, especially the art director Sadeq Es-haqi and the cinematographer Farzad Shahab, who were instrumental in helping move things forward. One of the most intense parts was sound design. I had planned every detail of the sound in the script, so I had a very specific vision — but since I couldn’t be in the studio, it took a lot of explanation, endless feedback loops, and patience.

The sound was crafted by AbdolReza Heydari, one of the most respected sound designers in Iranian cinema. He’s worked with directors like Jafar Panahi, and his films have screened at Cannes, Berlin, and Venice. I’m incredibly grateful he agreed to work on The Steak, even though I was probably a nightmare client, constantly requesting changes and tweaks. He stuck with the project, and the final result is something I’m deeply proud of.

VFX and colour correction were also done remotely. I fully trusted Farzad Shahab with the grading, and his version was exactly what I had hoped for. Amin Enteshari, the VFX artist, made everything look so easy but super natural and professional.

 

 

Any past or future projects that you would like to share here?

Yes! I’m currently working on King Size Bed, a politically charged short film set during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. It continues my focus on social repression and personal resistance, told through intimate and visually driven storytelling.

I’m also developing a feature film titled Graveyard, which takes place on a remote island. This project is being developed with the support and mentorship of AGBO Studios, founded by the Russo Brothers, as part of their fellowship award that I won at the Slamdance Film Festival.

 

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