The 64th New York Film Festival (NYFF), scheduled to run from September 25 through October 12, is preparing to host one of the most anticipated and unusually titled international documentary premieres of the season. Among its main slate presentations is Mani Haghighi’s Iranian documentary, I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies. The film, which explores the meticulous preservation of collective memory and artistic resistance in contemporary Iran, will celebrate its world premiere on September 30. Ahead of the screening, industry publications have released an exclusive first-look clip, generating widespread curiosity among cinema critics and festival attendees alike.
The documentary centers on the lives and work of Iranian curators, painters, and conceptual artists Nasser Bakhshi and Roghayeh Najdi. Operating out of the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz, the artistic duo has spent years amassing a monumental archive of found art objects, recovered ephemera, and non-official historical documents spanning eras from pre-Islamic times to the modern day. This sprawling repository functions both as an eclectic museum and a vital bastion for preserving elements of national history that have frequently faced state erasure. The NYFF screening of Haghighi’s film will be accompanied by another high-profile short: South of Tehran, directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. The companion piece reflects upon Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s experiences attending the previous year’s New York Film Festival, further underscoring the festival’s commitment to highlighting the resilience of Middle Eastern cinema.
Background and Context of the Project
Mani Haghighi occupies a singular position in contemporary Iranian cinema, frequently defying easy categorization, genre conventions, and the traditional limitations placed upon artists working within heavily censored environments. His latest project is a lively yet deeply sobering documentary that investigates how private obsession can translate into public preservation. Bakhshi’s massive collection of everyday artifacts and historical items is characterized by some as borderline hoarding, yet it serves as a sui generis record of a collective memory that official state narratives attempt to suppress.
Situated in Tabriz, Bakhshi’s museum-archive provides tangible proof of how individual narratives, frequently brushed aside by bureaucratic authority, are essential to painting a complete picture of a nation’s soul. The labor-intensive process of excavating, cataloging, labeling, and storing these objects is presented in the film as both an aesthetic undertaking and a profound political gesture. Haghighi’s lens demonstrates how this localized archival work inevitably collides with broader geopolitical conflicts, including ongoing hostilities between Iran, the United States, and Israel.
Complementing Bakhshi’s archival hoarding is the work of his partner, Roghayeh Najdi, whose surrealist paintings offer sharp commentary on the societal realities and limitations faced by women in modern Iran. Together, the couple forms the focal point of a visual language that critics have compared to cinematic legends ranging from Inggmar Bergman to Sergei Parajanov.
Chronology and Production Timeline
The creation of I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies is deeply tied to a specific, turbulent period in modern Iranian history. According to director Mani Haghighi, production began in September 2025. This timing placed the documentary’s inception precisely three months after the conclusion of the Twelve-Day War waged against Iran by Israel and the United States, and four months prior to the sweeping government crackdowns and massacres of Iranian protesters that occurred the following winter.
Reflecting on the psychological climate in which the film was born, Haghighi shared a detailed director’s statement outlining his mindset during production:
"We shot this film in September 2025… The most insidious effect of that period on me was a kind of mental paralysis: there was nothing I could do about what was happening around me, and the coordinates of my life were no longer mine to determine. Making this film was about bringing my friends together in the middle of that vast, moronic darkness in order to concentrate on images and words that could still mean something to us. I decided to make a film about a pair of artists and the archive of seemingly random material they kept in their house."
Upon entering Bakhshi and Najdi’s home, Haghighi encountered an environment defined by what he describes as "deranged hoarding shaped by obsessive order." He observed that the couple’s relationship with their belongings was entirely inseparable from their identities as independent creators communicating through a private, insular language.
As filming progressed, Haghighi found his own role shifting from objective documentarian to active participant within the archival ecosystem. "It soon became clear that everything I was doing was itself becoming part of the archive I was trying to capture," Haghighi noted. "I wasn’t simply making a film about it: I was entering it and feeding it. But this time, ceding control felt like liberation."
Distribution and Industry Outlook
As the countdown to the September 30 world premiere continues, I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies is currently navigating the international festival and sales landscape. International sales for the documentary are being managed by Films Boutique, a prominent agency known for handling avant-garde and critically acclaimed global cinema.
As of press time, the film is actively seeking a U.S. distribution partner. Given the high profile of Mani Haghighi’s previous works on the international circuit and the intense political and artistic relevance of the documentary’s subject matter, industry insiders expect the film to attract strong interest from specialty distributors specializing in world cinema and sociopolitical documentaries.
Broader Implications and Impact
The premiere of Haghighi’s documentary at the New York Film Festival highlights a vital ongoing dialogue regarding freedom of expression, state censorship, and the preservation of cultural heritage under authoritarian pressures. By documenting the painstaking preservation efforts of Bakhshi and Najdi, Haghighi’s film transcends a simple portrait of eccentric collectors, positioning itself as a universal testament to human endurance.
In an era where political instability and physical conflict threaten to erase localized histories, the act of collecting, categorizing, and remembering emerges as a revolutionary form of resistance. Through its striking visual composition, deeply personal framing, and complex historical backdrop, I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies promises to be one of the most intellectually stimulating cinematic achievements of the 2026 festival season.
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