AN INCOMPLETE CALENDAR

Canada202677 minArabic, English, Farsi, Spanish with English Subtitles Toronto Premiere

In a striking finale to her documentary essay trilogy, director Sanaz Sohrabi continues her exploration of resource extraction across Iran and West Asia with An Incomplete Calendar. Using a remarkable wealth of archival material seamlessly woven into a creative, scrapbook-style tapestry, the film centres on a rare and surprising artifact: the vinyl record of Rhymes and Songs for OPEC, or the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, recorded by the Concert Choir of the Central University of Venezuela to commemorate OPEC's 20th anniversary.

Interweaving rarely seen news clippings, expert testimony, and her own astute narrative voice, Sohrabi masterfully unpacks a complex history with gripping accessibility. Contrasting nations that viewed oil strictly as a market commodity against those that sought to use it as political leverage for Palestinian liberation struggles and pan-Arab solidarity movements, An Incomplete Calendar is told with singular creative vision, standing as a timeless record of seismic political shifts and providing an essential historical blueprint to understanding the fractured geopolitics of our world today.

– Mariam Zaidi