Iran

A man turns to violence after losing those he loves most in this taut drama from Iran. Ali (Rafi Pitts) is a reformed criminal who lives in a small flat in Tehran with his wife Sara (Mitra Hajjar) and their young daughter Saba (Saba Yaghoobi). While he’s grateful for the chance to support his family honestly, Ali doesn’t much care for his job as a night watchman or the noise and stress of city life; Ali heads off to the woods and clears his mind by hunting as often as he can. One day, Ali comes home from work to an empty apartment; he has no idea when his family has gone, and when they don’t return, he goes to the police. Read More »

Set in a tight-knit, extremely conservative island community off the Southern coast of Iran where all women wear burkas, this film begins as an investigation into the suicide of a woman named Samireh. Her husband callously says that while he cares about the lives of his kids, women’s lives are cheap. However, the women the director Oskouei interviews – many of whom were married off at age 12 or 13 – stand up for themselves and discuss their difficult existences. Oskouei relies mostly on close-up or medium-shot interviews, and as usual, displays his gift for framing people dynamically in tight spaces.Read More »

Hamid Nematollah’s compelling drama “stakes out a new path for Iranian cinema” (Variety) as it exposes key problems plaguing modern-day Tehran. Johan is a gentle and thoughtful young man who works as a window dresser at a fashionable boutique. When a poor and very beautiful young girl enters his store, Johan feels compelled to steal a pair of blue jeans for her. This action triggers a downward spiral that will change Johan’s life forever. “Painfully real and engaging” (Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times).—Iran—2004—115 mins.
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Nahal who is four months pregnant suddenly finds out that her child is dead. She chose silence and decides not to talk with anybody about that.

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A dark film with moments that recall Bunuel.

Nahal is around thirty and in her fourth month of pregnancy. During a routine check-up she learns that her baby has died and she now faces a curettage abortion in two days’ time. When she tries to address the subject, neither her mother nor her husband give her a chance to speak. Nahal knows that her family will force her to go back to taking the antidepressant medication she began prior to her pregnancy. At first the young woman appears to resume her daily life as before, but her silence soon turns into rebellion.Read More »

Ayaz, a lonely seventy-year-old man, detests his life. He’s constantly in search of ways of ending his life. Some years back, on the way back from a family wedding party, the minibus which he was driving, falls in the bottom of a valley and people on board -all his own family- are killed. Now, Ayaz lives with his teenager grandchild, Ebrahim – who is the last remainder of his family- and his wife’s voice on a cassette tape. He loathes being alive.Read More »

“Women’s Prison” recounts the life of the prisoners and the problems their families encounter in their struggle to survive. Here again filmmaker Kamran Shirdel employs the cinema verité style. The interviews with the prisoners, social workers and teachers serve as commentaries for “constructed” documentary images. The technical process shows the extent to which solving social problems depends on everyone’s cooperation and participation. Certainly prisoners alone cannot offer the remedy to the entire catalog of social ills that propel these women into delinquency.Read More »

An Iranian actor named Akbar is trying to become a serious actor instead of the clown everyone considers him to be. However financial problems force him to abandon his dream of being an artistic actor. He also has to deal with his family problems and his wife’s inability to become pregnant.Read More »

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Bahman and Ahad are two bankrupt manufacturers who are fleeing from their creditors. But when a fire in Plasco Building happens it is their chance to take advantages.Read More »

Ostensibly a fast-paced tale about poor people in the Persian Gulf living aboard a sinking oil tanker, “Iron Island” is a galloping fable full of offbeat characters and entertaining moments. At the same time, it doesn’t take much to read this second feature from director Mohammad Rasoulof (“The Twilight”) as a sharp-edged allegory about the country of Iran. Festivals will be happy to sail on its irony and invention, though it may take auxiliary engines to market such a hard-to-classify little gem.Read More »