Mani Haghighi brings his latest documentary to the New York Film Festival this fall, offering audiences a portrait of obsession through the lens of Persian art collecting. The film, titled "I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies," premieres at NYFF on September 30, marking a world premiere for the Iranian filmmaker known for his provocative interrogations of desire, memory, and accumulation.
The documentary centers on an unnamed art collector whose relationship with Persian pieces has evolved into something bordering on hoarding. Rather than presenting a conventional museum catalog or respectful archive survey, Haghighi seems intent on examining the psychology underlying such massive accumulation. The film treats the collector's holdings not merely as objects of cultural preservation but as evidence of deeper compulsions, emotional needs, and the blurry line between passion and pathology.
Haghighi has built a reputation for work that resists easy categorization. His previous films, including "Pig" and "About Elly," combined narrative and documentary impulses while exploring the private worlds of his subjects with unflinching intensity. This new project continues that trajectory. The title alone, taken from what appears to be poetry or literary reference, signals Haghighi's investment in emotional texture over straightforward documentation. It suggests the film grapples with desire, ownership, and what we seek when we collect.
The setting matters. Persian art carries historical weight and cultural significance that extends beyond aesthetics into questions of national identity, displacement, and memory. An Iranian filmmaker examining how one collector hoards these pieces invokes the complicated relationship many Iranians maintain with their cultural heritage, particularly those operating outside the country or within constrained circumstances. Haghighi's documentary likely probes this tension without stating it explicitly, allowing viewers to sit with the discomfort of watching accumulation become compulsion.
The New York Film Festival programming of this work places it within a distinguished tradition of documentary cinema that values subjective vision and formal experimentation. NYFF regularly champions international documentarians whose work transcends observational reporting to achieve something more akin to essay films or psychological portraits. Haghighi's inclusion signals that this project operates in that register.
For those tracking contemporary documentary practice and the state of Iranian cinema on the international festival circuit, this premiere matters. Haghighi's work consistently finds distribution and critical attention at major festivals, yet he remains less visible to mainstream audiences than his output deserves. The NYFF platform provides an opportunity for broader discovery.
The September 30 screening will likely draw collectors, cinephiles interested in global documentary practices, and those curious about how filmmakers examine the objects and systems through which we construct identity. The film arrives at a moment when questions about consumption, ownership, and what we preserve reflect anxieties that extend far beyond art collecting into how we live in an age of abundance and hoarding, both literal and psychological.