TEHRAN: Iranian film director Kamal Tabrizi, best known for poking fun at the Islamic republic’s turbaned establishment, is now using his big-screen talents to help a man of the cloth, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, get elected as president. Last year Tabrizi’s thief-cum-cleric comedy “Marmoulak” (“The Lizard”) narrowly made it past the censors. The satirical snipe at the life of the clergy became the most commercially successful film in the history of Iranian cinema.

And ahead of the June 17 election, top turban and campaign frontrunner Rafsanjani has recruited the director to shoot two 30-minute campaign films he hopes will capture the public’s imagination and votes.

Seen as a pragmatic conservative, Rafsanjani has been driving the debate by broaching hot topics such as relations with the US, government accountability and the need to address the demands of women and the youth.

Hence the employment of Tabrizi, who is still renowned for his irreverent message that in order to survive, the powerful clergy must have the common touch.

“The Lizard” begins with a daring prison escape by convicted serial thief and anti-hero Reza Marmoulak. Hurt in a prison brawl and sent to the infirmary, Reza finds the robes and turban of a cleric and slips out of jail undetected.

He then discovers the benefits of life as a holy man. His easy-going style — including sexually suggestive jokes — brings people flooding back to the mosques. Reza goes on to find God himself.

Huge crowds flocked to see the movie after it was eventually approved and released, but complaints from hardline clerics, from whom Rafsanjani is eager to distance himself, eventually saw it pulled.

“The films on Mr. Rafsanjani will have a lot in common with my other works, but they are not so funny,” Tabrizi predicted. He said that in one of the films, Rafsanjani spells out his policies and plans in the format of an informal talk show.

The second film, which he describes as more of a “personal Tabrizi thing,” is being kept under wraps until two days before the election when it will be broadcast on national television.

“I do not want them to be copied,” he said. Several of the other seven presidential candidates have also hired well-known names of the silver screen to promote their interests.

Former reformist MP and prominent filmmaker Behrouz Afkhami has volunteered to shoot ads for centrist cleric Mehdi Karoubi, a former parliament speaker campaigning on the pro-reform ticket.

According to Afkhami, the new campaign trend draws heavily on incumbent and outgoing President Mohammad Khatami’s reputation as a defender of artists and film makers. His support of the visual arts helped him to the first of two successive landslide victories in 1997.

The Iranian people love artists, and, as Afkhami explained, “the artists loved Khatami.”

Former national police chief and prominent right-wing candidate Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has also been sprucing up his image ahead of the election.

He now sports designer glasses and casual clothes, a far cry from his days as a top commander in the hardline Revolutionary Guards. His campaign films are likely to be a different style than those for Rafsanjani. Qalibaf has recruited Ahmad Reza Darvish, a famous war movie director and Iran-Iraq war veteran.

Each candidate is allowed to screen two 30-minute ads on state television on the days before the election.—AFP