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After 22 years, Aziz decides to return to his hometown, to sell some family possessions, including the house where he was born. But for his astonishment, the place is now a small restaurant, run by four women, one of them a girl whom he once dated. Attieh, the girl, tries to convince him not to sell the place by, instead of telling him a story a day as Sheherazade, cooking him a delicious dish every day.Read More »
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The fight for power in an isolated Iranian village. Two families have been enemies for so long they cannot even remember why. The only hope for peace between the feuding families is lost when an arranged marriage agreement is broken. Some days later, the groom, Karamat, returns with a brand new minibus. But a fierce competition for passengers break out when the bride, Mehrbanou, decides to do the same…Read More »
Review by Jonathan Rosenbaum
A 1989 film by Mohsen Makhmalbaf about the upsetting discoveries made by a shell-shocked veteran of the Iran-Iraq war after he returns to his job as a photojournalist in Tehran and to his fiancee, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. As in The Peddler, Makhmalbaf shows considerable talent and passion for dealing with the contradictions of contemporary Iranian life, and the restless and eclectic style of his direction makes this one of his most penetrating and disturbing works. In Farsi with subtitles. 75 min.
This one is also on Rosenbaum’s top 1000 list.Read More »
Spanning 18 years in an Iranian women’s prison, this follows two women: the new prison warden, a tough as nails devout Muslim who has served in the army on the Iraqi front, and a young midwife, Mitra, who is serving her sentence for killing her mother’s abusive husband. In the early years, Mitra is repeatedly punished as the warden tries to break her. This includes punishment for delivering a baby in the prison cell while all of the prison staff has taken shelter during an Iraqi bombing. The warden’s attitude starts to change after 8 years, when Mitra tries to protect a new inmate from rape at the hands of her older cellmates. When the baby comes back in 1991 as a 17 year old delinquent, Sepideh, the warden respects Mitra enough to protect the girl.Read More »