For those of you who saw the fascinating film The Lizard at SIFF last weekend (and are, like several of us here at The Stranger, avid followers of news about the Islamic Republic of Iran), there’s been a crazy twist in the life of director Kamal Tabrizi.

First, some background: the film is a daring satire about the role of clerics in Iranian society. Basically, this thief, nicknamed The Lizard for his amazing ability to scale the walls of prisons and wealthy homes (a culturally specific trick, to be sure—the homes of city dwellers in Iran are usually surrounded by a courtyard and high walls), escapes from prison in the garb of a cleric. On his way to meet a passport forger who will spirit him over the border and out of the reach of the law, he is mistaken for a cleric who shares his fake name. The Lizard is taken to live at a mosque, where, surrounded by sycophants and true believers, he starts to deliver sermons liberally spiked with street slang (“God is the heaviest dude in forgiveness,” as the subtitles would have it), and becomes incredibly popular (despite his inability to remember prayers). Everybody in the village commits to Islam anew, and the movie ends.

The film broke all sorts of box office records upon its initial release in Tehran, but was quickly banned when the censors got a whiff of its dicey content. Now cleric, Islamic revolutionary, and former president Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is running for office again, this time in the guise of a reformer. And who has he hired to film his campaign commercials? That’s right, Tabrizi. I can just imagine: “Rafsanjani is the heaviest dude in reform.”