Radio Dreams

It’s difficult to imagine a more jarring clash of cultures than in this sweet indie story from Iranian- born writer/director Babak Jalali.

A tiny, Farsi- l anguage radio station in San Francisco has arranged an on-air meeting between t ransplanted Afghan rock band (played by actual band Kabul Dreams) and t he heavy metal gods of Metallica.

I don’t know if Jalali has spent any time watching old WKRP in Cincinnati reruns, but PARS-FM has a similarly eclectic staff, most of whom would rather be doing something else. Hamid ( Mohsen Namjoo) is a f rustrated writer with a mane of white hair and a hand- sanitizer fixation, whose idea of ideal programming is a talk on Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton, or the history of sending monkeys into space.

The station’s owner thinks one of the members of Kabul Dreams would make a better wrestler than a musician, and sets out to train him. His beautiful daughter has another band member falling hard. Meanwhile, Metallica is conspicuously absent.

Jalali ushers us through the day in a well- crafted 94 minutes, sometimes cutting away from the station’s activities to show an American news outlet interviewing Hamid about his life and career. And we’re treated to live commercials for local ethnic restaurants, and a bizarre listeners- stories segment called “Iranian Days,” in which Hamid switches to a falsetto to tell the tale of an immigrant troubled by the sudden and mysterious appearance of the penguin outside her door.

It wouldn’t do to say whether Metallica e ver makes an appearance, but whether they do or not is no more relevant than whether Kabul Dreams’ trio finds true love or switches from bass guitar to wrestling. It’s all in a day’s broadcast at PARS- FM, and well worth tuning in for. ∂∂∂∂ Radio Dreams opens June 30 at the Carlton in Toronto; July 7 in London and Saskatoon; July 8 in Vancouver; and July 14 in Ottawa and Cobourg.