Maurice Hatton’s 1978 Long Shot comes with the subtitle “A film about filmmaking”, a nod at what has practically become a cinematic sub-category in itself. But while other directors have used the genre for philosophical or aesthetic rumination, Hatton’s subject is far more immediate and down-to-earth – the perilous business of just trying to get a movie made.

Specifically, an independent movie: Long Shot is a glorious satire on the sheer rigmarole of attempting to stitch a deal together. It’s set against the backdrop of the 1977 Edinburgh Film Festival, which gives rich extra atmosphere, and has a range of cameos from various figures in the film world who were clearly in on the joke, happily sending themselves up in sympathy with the tribulations of would-be producer Charlie and his scriptwriter Neville as they try to get their Aberdeen oil adventure drama Gulf and Western off the ground.

Alan Bennett cameos as a hilariously diffident doctor

The two are played by Charles Gormley, the Glasgow director who moved from early documentary work – he had a production company, Tree Films (“Branches Everywhere”), with Bill Forsyth in the 1970s – to make features like 1986’s Heavenly Pursuits, and actor and television writer Neville Smith. Hatton gives it all a nicely sardonic verité touch, complete with elements of voice-over narration and Shandy-esque intertitles, along the lines of “On the dangers of not looking before you leap” or “Wherein ways are explored to keep the wolf from the door”. One simply announces, “Scene missing”. By definition a micro-budget project, it was shot in grainy black and white on a combination of short ends and some East German ORWO stock that was pushing its expiry date.

Charlie has a script – though the pains of rewriting are central to the film – and some funding promised, if he can get a name director on board. So it’s off to Edinburgh, in search of Sam Fuller (the director had a long association with the Film Festival there), but Fuller is nowhere to be found. “Is he press?” one assistant in the festival offices queries. Charlie tries to interest Wim Wenders, too, who's there to present his The American Friend (Wenders is credited as “Another Director”). John Boorman becomes another later candidate.

The duo becomes an unlikely trio with the appearance, for no particular good reason but very charmingly, of actress Annie (Anne Zelda). Various picaresque dashes around the Edinburgh streets follow, one in a car commandeered from Stephen Frears (credited as “Biscuit Man"). Gallerist Richard Demarco appears somewhat grouchily as himself, Alan Bennett turns in a brilliant cameo as a hilariously diffident doctor who, on being told that writing is a lonely profession, suggests meals on wheels. Susannah York gamely plays along: hearing that the female role is underdeveloped, she coolly replies, “So you came to me?”

Long Shot is a perfect fit for the BFI’s Flipside strand, a rediscovery that is absolutely worth making – as well as a snapshot of the times, it’s also a true reflection of the enormous struggles, not to mention ingenuity, that go into getting a film idea anywhere near the screen. Gormley simply had cinema in his blood – Glasgow surely deserves a memorial to the director – and the film's final scene transports him in glorious technicolour to Hollywood, cruising the boulevards in a stretch convertible. It's a lovely ending, the stuff that dreams are made on.

This release's three extras are right on topic, too. Ross Wilson’s 1986 Hooray for Holyrood celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Edinburgh Film Festival: it’s presented by Robbie Coltrane, who doubled as a driver for the event in his stylish vintage auto (Sam Fuller did turn up, and was among his passengers). Sean Connery's Edinburgh, from 1982, is exactly what it says on the tin, lavish in its production values. Maurice Hatton’s earlier Scene Nun, Take One, a 1964 26-minuter, is a London street comedy starring Susannah York and the adventures that follow when she dresses up as a nun. There's an affectionate booklet tribute to Gormley, "Long Shot to Hollywood", by Bill Forsyth. An enchantingly off-beat package.

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“People think babies are sweet. But this one’s bitter.” So squeaks Alice Lowe’s malevolent unborn daughter in the horror comedy Prevenge, prompting her heavily pregnant host Ruth to embark on a killing spree.

The Shepherd – original title El pastor – is a Spanish film which carried all before it at the Raindance Festival. It’s a very Raindance kind of movie. Shot on a low budget with a small cast, a single handheld camera shaking like a leaf, it sticks up for the little guy against a big bad corporate world.

Inversion may not be the catchiest of titles, but in the case of Iranian director Behnam Behzadi’s film its associations are multifarious. On the immediate level it refers to the “thermal inversion” that generates the smogs that engulf his location, Tehran, and also direct his story. Meteorologically, the phenomenon happens when a layer of warm air sits over one of cold, preventing it from rising, and trapping pollutants in the atmosphere.

But there’s surely a deeper relevance in this story of family conflict – in particular sibling antagonism – that relates to the position of women in Iranian society, how their assertions of independence can be easily blocked by the society (and not only by the men) that surrounds them. The stand-off in the Earth’s atmosphere compares, at least loosely, with the human oppositions that Behzadi depicts in his film.

It details the struggles to negotiate the variety of complications that life throws up 

However, its opening depicts a world in which women are existing rather comfortably on their own terms. Niloofar (Sahar Dolatshahi) lives with her mother Mahin (Shirin Yazdanbakhsh): she is the youngest child, and remains unmarried, while her older brother and sister have their own families. It’s not that she looks after the older woman, who lives a busy and independent life which is curtailed only by her health problems. When the Tehran smog is heavy, Niloofar tries to prevail on her mother to stay at home; the latter insists, almost skittishly, that as long as she has her medicine and oxygen with her, all will be well.

It’s a middle-class environment that allows Niloofar to live an independent life, running the tailoring business that belonged to her late father: she has developed it over more than a decade, and has further plans for expansion. There appear to be no restrictions in her professional world and, unknown to her family, she has renewed contact with a childhood friend who has returned to Tehran from abroad, and their interaction is beginning to look like they are dating. Again, it’s a process in which Niloofar is an equal player.

When the inevitable happens, and Mahin ends up in hospital, all that looks set to change. The doctor’s prognosis is uncompromising: Mahin must leave Tehran, or the consequences will be fatal. There isn’t so much a family conclave, as a decision, without discussion, by the two married siblings that Niloofar will accompany her, leaving her life and work in Tehran behind. “No husband, no children, so I don’t count?” is her retort, as the family encounters become increasingly confrontational (not least when her brother simply shuts her out of her work premises, to pay off his own debts). The older sister sees it as no less of a transaction: in return for going with the mother, Niloofar will receive an allowance. (Sahar Dolatshahi with Ali Mosaffa, playing her brother, pictured above)

Yet these loyalties aren’t quite so one-sided. Niloofar’s teenage niece Saba (Setareh Hosseini) implicitly takes the side of her aunt (she can see how her own future might develop). The possibilities of the burgeoning romantic attachment may be tested when certain other dependencies are revealed, but such difficulties can be negotiated (it involves a great deal of to-and-froing on the Tehran mobile network). And, as the matriarch begins to recover she reveals a keener will than anyone had anticipated.

The elements of drama are strong, and give the film’s closely observed scenes – even when a touch of melodrama slips in, Inversion is still very much a work of realism – their power. It premiered at Cannes last year in the “Un Certain Regard” programme, and the quality of the acting impresses profoundly. Dolatshahi has a paradoxical combination of composure and vulnerability, and her face captivates the camera: she’s matched by the utterly natural Hosseini, the youngest presence on the screen, as well as by the scheming siblings, unsympathetic but still somehow understandable. Such a keen definition of character more than compensates for a budget we assume was modest. (Romantic interest: Sahar Dolatshahi with Ali Reza Aghakhani, pictured above)

Inversion doesn’t quite fit into the arthouse strand of Iranian cinema that is best known in the West (and it certainly doesn’t belong to the mainstream that dominates the country’s film industry). Possibly, at home, it falls into what's called the “popular art” genre, and its concerns – detailing the struggles to negotiate the variety of complications that life throws up – are close to those of Asghar Farhadi’s recent The Salesman. Both deal with the consequences of a settled life being disrupted. Though European realism might also be another point of reference, Behzadi’s brisk conclusion consciously leaves any such allegiance behind – in a way that feels more accomplished cinematically than it does thematically.  

To say that a film opens up a world to us may seem a double-edged compliment. After all, why should we be surprised to recognise patterns of life in Tehran as somehow familiar – even if we think of Iran as “closed” in some way? Surprisingly, I’m drawn to comparisons with Jon Snow’s broadcasts for Channel 4 this week on the Iranian elections, which conveyed something, however briefly, of what life there, in all its contradictions, may be like. For almost an hour-and-a-half Inversion anchors us in Behzadi’s here-and-now. It is no small achievement.  

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Overleaf: watch the trailer for Inversion