The Archive of Resistance: Mani Haghighi’s Unorthodox Portrait of Memory at the 2026 New York Film Festival
As the 64th edition of the New York Film Festival (NYFF) prepares to take over Lincoln Center from September 25 through October 12, 2026, the anticipation surrounding its international lineup is palpable. Among the most discussed entries is a project that defies traditional documentary conventions: I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies. Directed by the acclaimed Iranian auteur Mani Haghighi, the film promises to be one of the most intellectually stimulating and visually provocative premieres of the festival.
Set to debut on September 30, the documentary offers a deep, kaleidoscopic look at the lives and labor of Nasser Bakhshi and Roghayeh Najdi. Situated in the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz, the duo operates a sprawling, labyrinthine archive of found objects and recovered historical documents. It is a work that Haghighi describes not just as a record, but as a living, breathing act of political and artistic defiance.
The Subject: A Life Amidst the Objects
At the heart of the film lies a fundamental question: What happens to a nation’s history when official state narratives attempt to erase it? For Nasser Bakhshi, a painter, conceptual artist, and curator, the answer lies in the accumulation of the "discarded." His home in Tabriz serves as a museum-archive, a space that borders on the chaotic, where thousands of found objects and non-official documents—spanning from pre-Islamic eras to the present day—are meticulously cataloged.
Haghighi’s lens frames this collection not as a symptom of clinical hoarding, but as a monumental, perhaps even desperate, attempt to preserve the collective memory of a people. By excavating these items, Bakhshi transforms the domestic space into a bastion of counter-history. His partner, the artist Roghayeh Najdi, provides a crucial tonal counterpoint. Her surrealist paintings serve as a commentary on the contemporary status of women in Iranian society, weaving a complex narrative thread that explores the private lives of individuals trapped within larger, often suffocating, political structures.
Chronology of Production: Filming in the "Darkness"
The genesis of I Deserve a Lover is inseparable from the geopolitical volatility that has defined the region in recent years. In a candid director’s statement provided to the press, Haghighi contextualizes the film’s creation against a backdrop of profound personal and national trauma.
- September 2025: Production commences in Tabriz, just three months following the conclusion of the "Twelve-Day War" waged against Iran by a coalition of Israel and the United States.
- Winter 2025–2026: A period of severe civil unrest, marked by the massacre of Iranian protesters by government forces.
- Post-Production (Spring/Summer 2026): Haghighi grapples with the "mental paralysis" of the era, ultimately viewing the act of filmmaking as a necessary, albeit fragile, attempt to reclaim agency.
Haghighi notes that the film was an exercise in finding light in a "vast, moronic darkness." By bringing together his friends and focusing on the tactile, tangible world of Bakhshi and Najdi’s archive, the director sought to create something that retained human meaning when the external world felt increasingly abstract and brutal.
Supporting Data: The Aesthetic of the Archive
The film’s visual language is as complex as its subject matter. Critics who have had early glimpses of the project describe a stylistic synthesis that feels in dialogue with the works of Ingmar Bergman and Sergei Parajanov. It is an aesthetic of intense, claustrophobic beauty—a "private language" of objects that, when viewed through Haghighi’s lens, becomes a public statement.
The archive itself is described as a repository of "erased" stories. In a political climate where the state dictates history, Bakhshi’s act of collecting—excavating, labeling, and storing—is explicitly framed as a political act. The film suggests that every object held in this Tabriz home is a piece of evidence against the erasure of the individual.
The documentary will be preceded at its NYFF premiere by a short film titled South of Tehran, directed by the esteemed Kleber Mendonça Filho. This short, which centers on the experience of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi during last year’s New York Film Festival, serves as a poignant thematic bridge, grounding the audience in the broader discourse of Iranian artistic resilience on the global stage.
Official Responses and Programming Context
The New York Film Festival’s decision to include I Deserve a Lover in its main slate signals a continued commitment to spotlighting work that challenges the boundaries of the medium. The festival’s programming synopsis emphasizes Haghighi’s refusal to conform to "easy categorization or genre."
"In profiling Bakhshi and Najdi," the festival notes, "Haghighi comes up with a distinct visual language… His collecting process is both an artistic and political act, one that, as Haghighi shows, inevitably intersects with Iran’s ongoing conflicts."
The film, which is currently seeking U.S. distribution, is being represented by the sales agency Films Boutique. Industry insiders expect that the film’s premiere at Lincoln Center will serve as a catalyst for distribution deals, given the high level of international curiosity surrounding Haghighi’s recent work and the film’s evocative, if lengthy, title.
Implications: The Archive as a Liberatory Act
Perhaps the most profound takeaway from the film’s production notes is the director’s admission that he became a participant in the process he was documenting. "I wasn’t simply making a film about it," Haghighi wrote. "I was entering it and feeding it. But this time, ceding control felt like liberation."
This transformation has deep implications for documentary filmmaking. I Deserve a Lover moves beyond the role of the objective observer. It acknowledges that in times of extreme political crisis, the filmmaker cannot remain detached from the subject. By becoming part of the archive, Haghighi suggests that history is not just something we observe; it is something we curate, contribute to, and—at our best—actively defend.
For viewers at the 2026 New York Film Festival, the film poses a challenging inquiry: If the world around us becomes a source of "fiery dooms," what do we keep? What do we protect? And, ultimately, what do we choose to remember?
As the festival approaches, the significance of I Deserve a Lover seems to grow. It is not merely a portrait of two people in Tabriz; it is a meditation on the persistence of the human spirit in the face of systemic erasure. By documenting the "deranged hoarding" that keeps memory alive, Mani Haghighi has provided a profound contribution to the cinematic landscape, one that is likely to resonate long after the final credits roll at the Walter Reade Theater.
Quick Facts: I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies
- Director: Mani Haghighi
- Subjects: Nasser Bakhshi and Roghayeh Najdi
- Location of Archive: Tabriz, Iran
- NYFF Premiere Date: September 30, 2026
- Accompanying Short: South of Tehran (Dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)
- Sales Representation: Films Boutique
- Status: Seeking U.S. Distribution
