Loneliness and isolation are a part of life for two mine keepers in a remote mountain town. Their only light of hope comes in the form of a small dog they find and an unknown woman they see walking in the distance. People enter and exit their lives, including a group of mine workers—but it is the very world they have created for themselves to deal with their loneliness that keeps others out. Nevertheless, they still ultimately find pleasure in the subtle and simple things of life.
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Reviews:
This extraordinary debut feature, about a 7-year-old’s first journey alone into the streets of Tehran, is a movie of audacious subtlety and simplicity, and a deserving Cannes prize-winner. It takes place in ‘real time’, the 84 minutes leading to New Year (March 21), as little Razieh (Aïda Mohammadkhani) goes off to purchase, with her mother’s last 500 toman, the ‘chubby’ gold-fish that has taken her fancy. Along the way, she encounters snake-charmers, irate shopkeepers, a country-born soldier, a young Afghan boy with a white balloon – a whole world hitherto ‘forbidden’. Scripted in collaboration with leading Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, this is a film of small incident, minute, telling observations, and enormous heart and intelligence. Tethering the movie to the child’s point of view (both literal and metaphorical), Panahi absorbs us so entirely into his heroine’s delicate, enquiring world, that the loss of her money and her separation from her brother create an atmosphere of suspense as gripping as that of any Hitchcock thriller. Moreover, suggestive intimations of the troubled adult world – the mother’s anxiety in the bazaar, the lonely ‘outsiders’ – combine to produce a feeling of almost metaphysical tension.
– Source : Time Out Film Guide 13Read More »
Tahmineh Milani’s “The Fifth Reaction”
An Iranian Woman Fighting for Her Rights
By Josef Schnelle
Five women sit in a restaurant in Tehran and talk about their husbands and their marriages. First, the conversations are quite amusing, but later on we notice that each woman faces serious problems below the thin surface of legal rights granted to women in Iran.Read More »
Today Iranian cinema is one of the most highly regarded national cinemas in the world, regularly winning festival awards and critical acclaim for films which combine remarkable artistry and social relevance. Iran: A Cinematographic Revolution traces the development of this film industry, which has always been closely intertwined with the country’s tumultuous political history, from the decades-long reign of Reza Shah Pahlevi and his son, the rise of Khomeini and the birth of the Islamic Republic, the seizure by militants of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and the devastating war with Iraq.Read More »
Synopsis
Upon returning home to Iran after more than two decades abroad, visiting professor Arash is quickly thrust into a past he’s spent his whole life trying to escape. With an estranged father on his deathbed and a mother who wants nothing to do with her husband’s shady past, Arash finds himself at the mercy of the rest of the family who have their own ideas about what should happen to his father’s assets. Meanwhile, Arash is also grappling with the legacy of his brother’s mysterious, long-ago death. A stranger in his native country, he struggles to navigate the labyrinthine state bureaucracy, as well as the darker twists and turns of a corrupt and violent netherworld.
Seattle Film FestivalRead More »
SYNOPSIS:
This film’s first shot shows students descending a staircase in a calm, orderly fashion. Its second portrays the same action as a chaotic rush. Separated by slates and Kiarostami’s voice intoning, “sound, camera,” subsequent sequences describe the same dichotomous behavior in a schoolyard, on a school bus, and in the haphazard traffic of Tehran. Kiarostami described this as “a truly educational film,” but it plays more like a quirky philosophic aside.Read More »
Quote:
Analyzing the intricacies and variances between differing film titles is something of an indulgence for film critics, especially when they’re searching for a quick, utilitarian lead into otherwise complex films. Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s film à clef revisitation (or, rather, a cinematic palimpsest) of a violent 1974 encounter from his past as an angry young fundamentalist went by the title A Moment of Innocence in its European and American releases, but its original Farsi title was actually Bread and Flower. The latter title refers to the two objects that play into the all-important remembered event, when Makhmalbaf stabbed one of the Iranian Shaw’s policemen in an attempt to snatch his gun away, an attack that led to the future director’s incarceration. (Makhmalbaf hid his knife under a circle of flatbread; the policeman was holding a flower he intended to offer the entrancing young girl who, unbeknownst to him, was actually a decoy intended to distract the cop so Makhmalbaf could steal his firearm.) Some 20 years later, while a reformed and de-radicalized Makhmalbaf was directing Salaam Cinema, the now former-policeman approached Makhmalbaf again, their meeting (and triggered memories) spurning A Moment of Innocence, a title of which seems to echo the film’s aura of reflective enlightenment and mutual cooperation between the two men (as opposed to the Farsi title’s emphasis on the fragmented multiplicity of memory).Read More »
Quote:
Consistently voted as one of the greatest national films of all time by Iranian critics, Tranquility in the Presence of Others is an early film by Iranian auteur Naser Taghvai. A painfully honest portrayal of alcoholism and promiscuity and their effects on family relations, Tranquility hails from the deepest corners of Iranian society but delivers to a universal audience, exploring themes that remain relevant to this day.
In the film, a retired lieutenant who has recently married a much younger woman after the death of his wife returns from rural Iran to Tehran to live with his two daughters. The housemaid tries her best to hide from him the fact that his daughters live a life of decadence and promiscuity. Nevertheless, his uneasiness with their lifestyle leads him to alcohol and slowly drives him to insanity. Suicide attempts, unwanted pregnancies and marriages and tense relationships between family members create an environment far from the poetic Tranquility of the title.Read More »
Synopsis
A haunting love story that spans three decades, Rhino Season is based on the tragic story of a Kurdish poet and family friend of Ghobadi’s who was unjustly incarcerated during Iran’s Islamic Revolution. The victim of a personal vendetta, Sahel (Behrouz Vossoughi) is thrown into prison along with his devoted wife Mina (Monica Bellucci). Inexplicably released after serving a ten-year sentence, Mina is informed by the authorities that Sahel is dead. Heartbroken, she and her two children leave Iran for Istanbul — unknowingly leaving behind her very-much-alive husband, who is forced to stay in prison for another twenty years. Finally released, Sahel sets out to find his wife, the memory of whom was the only thing that had sustained him throughout his agonizing ordeal. But after clinging to an intangible vision for so many years, what is the reality that awaits him now?
mijfilm.comRead More »