Isatis is a 2020 Iranian documentary directed by Alireza Dehghan, portraying the desert city of Yazd through its four traditional elements, water, wind, soil and fire. Under water it follows the builders who maintain the city's ancient qanat aqueducts; under soil and wind it turns to Yazd's adobe construction and its windcatcher towers. Under fire it turns explicitly to the devotional life of Yazd's own Zoroastrian community, tracing the sacred fire tradition from Zoroastrian religious masters into the city's modern industry as a living practice rather than a historical relic. The film frames Yazd's Zoroastrians, Muslims and Jews together as evidence of the city's long practiced religious coexistence, and closes on industrial development and pollution as a present threat to the heritage it documents. It screened in the documentary section of the 38th Fajr International Film Festival, Iran's principal national film festival, in February 2020. The Zoroastrian community is one explicitly named strand of this citywide portrait, not the film's sole subject.
Facts
Subject Matter
Religious Subject MatterThe devotional and communal life of Yazd's Zoroastrian community, presented as one strand within the city's wider religious coexistence and as a living, present day tradition rather than solely a historical subject. 1 The film's primary subject is the city of Yazd across all four elements; the Zoroastrian community and its fire tradition form one explicit, substantial strand under fire, not the film's sole focus. Scholarly ReceptionScreened in the documentary competition of the 38th Fajr International Film Festival, Iran's principal state supported national film festival, in February 2020. 1 Production
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Four Elements, One City and Yazd's Zoroastrian Thread
Isatis, a 2020 Iranian documentary directed by Alireza Dehghan, is not a film about Zoroastrianism. It is a film about the desert city of Yazd, organized around the four traditional elements, water, wind, soil and fire, and it is worth being honest about that scope before describing what it actually contains: a substantial, specifically named strand devoted to Yazd's living Zoroastrian community.
Under the film's account of water, it follows the builders who maintain the city's ancient qanat aqueducts. Under soil and wind, it turns to Yazd's adobe construction and its famous windcatcher towers, cooling architecture built centuries before mechanical air conditioning. Under fire, the film turns explicitly to the devotional life of Yazd's Zoroastrian community, tracing what its own promotional synopsis describes as the story of sacred fire carried from Zoroastrian religious masters into the city's modern factories, presenting that fire tradition as a living practice continuous with the present day rather than as a closed historical subject.
The film frames Yazd's Zoroastrians, Muslims and Jews together as evidence of a city that has practiced religious coexistence for a very long time, and it closes on a note of real concern: that industrial development and pollution now threaten a heritage the film spends its whole runtime documenting. It screened in the documentary section of the 38th Fajr International Film Festival, Iran's principal national film festival, in February 2020.
A Living Fire, Not a Museum Piece
Iran holds the historic homeland of Zoroastrianism, and Yazd specifically has functioned for centuries as the tradition's most continuously inhabited center inside the country, distinct from the much larger Zoroastrian diaspora community that took root in India generations ago. A film that documents Yazd's Zoroastrian fire tradition as an ordinary, present tense part of the city's life, rather than as an artifact of a vanished past, is documenting something that outside coverage of Zoroastrianism does not always get right.
Coverage of small religious minorities tends toward one of two framings: reverent preservation of something assumed to be disappearing, or brief mention inside a wider travel or heritage story. Isatis does something closer to the second, since the Zoroastrian community is one strand within a broader civic portrait of Yazd rather than the film's sole subject. But the specificity with which it treats that strand, naming the fire tradition, tracing it from religious masters through to industry, and placing the community inside a framework of active, ongoing coexistence with Yazd's Muslim and Jewish residents, is itself notable. It is a documentary made from within Iran, in Persian, about Iranians, in which the Zoroastrian community appears not as a subject imported from outside scholarship but as one of the city's own recognized constituent parts.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Yazd, Cities This source names Yazd directly: "Dehghan, portraying the desert city of Yazd through its four traditional elements, water, wind, soil and fire."
Belongs to Tradition
Depicts the living Zoroastrian community of Yazd, Iran, the historic center of Irani Zoroastrianism as distinct from the Parsi diaspora tradition already covered elsewhere in the atlas, tracing its fire tradition as a present day practice rather than shared general Zoroastrian canon.
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