Plainly but nonetheless effectively handled, “The Twilight” relates a case of prison recidivism with the real-life subjects playing themselves. Chance to glimpse incarceration and ex-con life in Iran will hold attention for foreign viewers, though this very modest, earnest exercise in old-school social problem cinema ultimately proves that the related issues are pretty much the same the world over. Fest and educational play are signaled.Read More »
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Mina’s life is turned upside down when she learns that her husband was innocent of the crime for which he was executed, so she starts a silent battle against a cynical system for her own and her daughter’s sakeRead More »
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In the bombed-out ruins of post-Taliban Kabul, Noqreh (Agheleh Rezaie) lives with her conservative father (Abdolgani Yousefrazi) and her sister-in-law, Leylomah (Marzieh Amiri), in temporary refuge buildings. Although her father insists that she go to the religious school, Noqreh sneaks into a secular school for girls. Her teacher encourages her to run for class president, and she finds support from a refugee poet (Razi Mahebi), who introduces her to the work of Garcia Lorca. Noqreh dreams about becoming president of Afghanistan, and she bases her political ideals on former Pakistani president Benazir Bhutto.Read More »
On their way back from a wild party, Arineh and Nobahar cause a car accident. A mysterious stranger by the name of Toofan offers to cover the costs. This won’t be the last time they’ll cross his path over the course of the night. Cars form a popular setting in Iranian cinema. They move through the public sphere, yet their occupants remain among themselves. But what happens if a policeman suddenly gets into your vehicle, finds black market DVDs and forces you to admit, tipsily, that Argo is a film hostile to Iran? This road movie through Tehran by night begins as a hyperactive, drugged-up farce that pokes fun at the authorities, interprets the cultural history of Western toilets, and postulates other daring intercultural theories. Yet gradually the atmosphere changes and tension steadily rises in the car, thanks to Toofan, who keeps appearing again and again out of the blue. He plays a diabolical game with the two friends, one that crosses the boundaries into the metaphysical realm. As fanciful and spooky as the plot may seem, it is clearly anchored in Iran’s present.Read More »
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A beautifully moving story of an old man driving in the busy streets of Tehran. At the traffic lights he notices a young girl who is sad in the back seat of her parent’s car, they are too busy arguing. Old man intervenes and give’s his wife’s flowers to the young couple to stop them from arguing. We only realise how important those flowers were to the old man when he drives off.Read More »
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Rahim is in prison because of a debt he was unable to repay. During a two-day leave, he tries to convince his creditor to withdraw his complaint against the payment of part of the sum. But things don’t go as planned.Read More »
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Her poetic two-channel video installation Tooba is based on the Koran, in which Tooba, the sacred tree of paradise, offers shelter and sustenance to those in need. Neshat’s video places a woman within a groove in the trunk of a large fig tree, symbolising its soul. They stand, alone, in a stone-walled garden set in a mountainous landscape. Men and women draw near and enter the enclosure, seeking refuge, as the Tooba-woman disappears into the Tooba-tree. The piece is ambiguous. Who has agency? Is it the crowd, who ‘invade’ the garden or the tree-woman who draws them towards her like a magnet? Tooba is dedicated to Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipour, whose novel Women without Men concerns five women sojourning in a garden, one of whom is transformed into a tree.Read More »
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Rapture is an installation of two synchronized black-and-white video sequences that are projected on opposite walls; large in scale, they evoke cinema screens. Working with hours of footage and a team of editors, the artist constructed two parallel narratives: on one side of the room, men populate an architectural environment; in the other sequence, women move within a natural one. The piece begins with images of a stone fortress and a hostile desert, respectively. The fortress dissolves into a shot of over one hundred men—uniformly dressed in plain white shirts and black pants—walking quickly through the cobblestone streets of an old city and entering the gates of the fortress. Simultaneously, the desert scene dissolves into a shot of an apparently equal number of women, wearing flowing, full-length veils, or chadors, emerging from different points in the barren landscape.Read More »
Jean Rouch’s camera follows his friend, filmmaker/actor/critic Farrokh Ghaffari, as he walks and talks us through the famous Shah Mosque in Esfehan. While guiding him and answering his questions, Ghaffari makes Rouch discover the beauties of the architecture of the mosque and its impact on the city. Throughout the tour, they discuss Islam’s complex relationship with death, sex and cinema.Read More »