Film Review | ‘Tatami’

Tatami opens with an establishing shot looking out a bus window divided in two by a straight line. The cinematography is black and white, the landscape passing by slowly. Viewers sense that this is a world we are about to step into—a world of absolutes, with no middle ground. The camera pans to a group of athletes sitting quietly; one in the center frame is listening to Persian rap music. 

The bus arrives at the World Judo Championship, in the Georgian city of Tbilisi. The athletes are the Iranian national team, led by top judoka Leila Hosseini (Arienne Mandi) and her coach Maryam (Zar Amr Ebrahimi, who co-directed the film with Guy Nattiv). Judo is a Japanese form of martial arts, where rather than throwing fists and kicks, the opponents are actively trying to find ways to wrestle their opponent to the ground. The word judo translates to “gentle way,” speaking to the complex, almost nonviolent manner by which opponents try to subdue each other. In a sense, the sport serves as an appropriate metaphor for the action to follow—the complex dance between nations, their people and their governments.

After arriving and beginning warmups, everything is going according to plan for the Iranian team, until Leila unexpectedly encounters her Israeli counterpart. The audience may be primed for an immediate conflict to arise, but instead the two just have a simple catching up. They already know each other and seem to get along well. In fact, you get a sense that they are just two competitors, their nationalities underemphasized. When both women start rising through the ranks, winning match after match, the likelihood of them facing one another starts to rise exponentially. Then Maryam gets a phone call.

Her bosses want Leila to drop out of the competition rather than face the Israeli, or “the occupying regime” as the voice on the other end of the phone puts it. To compete would be to recognize Israel, something the Iranian regime has not done since the 1979 revolution. This goes all the way up the chain of command. At first Maryam protests, but she backs down in tired defeat, rather than draw unnecessary attention. The only thing is, Leila refuses. 

Tatami is the Japanese word for the mat on which Judo fights occur. The cinematography frames the mats with pitch black surroundings, the audience hidden with only their cheers to be heard (an artful way of making the most out of fewer filming resources). There’s an entire world of complicated international conflict happening outside of the building, but in here, the tatami is the only world that exists. It isn’t country vs. country, it’s either you stay on top or you get pinned.

Tatami follows in the tradition of popular sports movies like Rocky, where the underdog competitor has to face off against a more dominant opponent. That franchise even waded into political territory in Rocky IV, with “The Italian Stallion,” boxer Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), facing off against Soviet fighter Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) in a fight that served as a microcosm of the Cold War. Tatami is much the same, only the dominant competitor is not on the tatami mat. They’re not even in the building, save a few agents. They’re on the phone calling from Tehran.

There’s an existential absurdity to the demand. Leila could compete and stand a good chance of winning glory for her country, but that seems to matter less to the powers that be than maintaining a rigid political stance. Why should they have a say in this matter at all? Yet, this is the backward logic that often accompanies any authoritarian regime. If they wanted to make a statement, why not allow her to compete against Israel? What if she won? Wouldn’t that achieve the sort of glory they would be looking for? International sport has often been a great way for countries around the world to work out some aggression they may have toward one another. If blood is shed, it is shed incidentally and left on the mat or the ring, literally and metaphorically.

An interesting thought I had while watching Tatami (which opens in select U.S. theaters on Friday): This movie is about Iran, but is it also about Israel? The first ever film to be co-directed by Israeli and Iranian filmmakers (Nattiv and Ebrahami, respectively), the movie never strays from Leila or Maryam’s point of view. One wonders what is happening with Team Israel, but Tatami, perhaps wisely, sticks to its Iranian focus. The story also reflects the real life story of Ebrahami, who faced horrific shaming and punishment by the Iranian regime and now lives and works in exile in France. 

The movie feels gripping and the stakes increasingly high, and yet, having seen such crowd-pleasing movies before, I was pretty sure I knew where the film would end up. This can be an issue with statement movies—you know early on what the statement is and become aware enough of the plot mechanics unfurling to arrive at that final destination. Watching Tatami, I felt like there were some missed opportunities to explore the history of the relationship between Iran and Israel, beyond the fairly obvious assessment that an authoritarian regime is bad. Even so, the film contains some surprisingly unresolved, gut-punching moments, reflective of the real world where not everything has a happy ending. 

Tatami was a favorite when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2023. In a statement reported by Indiewire, co-directors Nattiv (Golda) and Ebrahami said, “We believe that art is the voice of sanity cutting through the noise. In recent decades, the Iranian government has done everything in its power to prevent Iranians and Israelis from meeting each other at international events, without regard to the truth about how people actually feel. Despite this, we found a way.” Tatami suggests a more nuanced reality that even those in the West might be willing to recognize. From its very conception, it faced enormous hurdles to get to a theatrical release. That the U.S. release date is finally here should provide a little sunlight in an otherwise dark historical conflict.

Tatami is opening in select cities, including New York City, on Friday, June 13.