Iran

The portrait of three teenage boys being held in a youth corrections centre in Teheran, It’s Always Late for Freedom depicts the distress of a generation sacrificed on the altar of Iran’s profound social problems. Hardcore drugs, poverty, violence… these young men, hardly more than boys, seem more like victims than perpetrators. Entirely immersed in the everyday life of the prison, filmmaker Mehrdad Oskouei (The Other Side of Burka) won the young men’s trust, and they hold nothing back of their hurts, frustrations, hopes and confusion. The camera records their childish schemes, conversations with family, and the routine of prison life with intimate close-ups of faces and bodies that reveal their secret pain. A gripping story of childhood laid bare.Read More »

A young university professor, who leads a quiet and reclusive life and fills his life with reading and teaching literature, meet a young girl who has altered the course of her life for the sake of a man she loves. She has promised to meet her beloved at a certain spot on four consecutive nights exactly one year after their last meeting. The young professor’s encounter with the young and passionate girl during four nights brings about significant changes in both of their lives and beliefs. Now concepts like love, literature and expection have a new meaning for them.Read More »

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A group of students decides to camp on a desolate Caspian region which runs a competition of kite flying during the winter solstice. Not far from the camp, live Babak and Saeed, two grim cooks. Armed with sharp knives, they roam the forest in search of meat to serve the decrepit restaurant they run nearby…Read More »

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Dawn of the Capricorn, made by Ahmad Faroughi Kadjar (Qajar) in 1964, is a strange composition that looks at the stagnated situation of a country suspended between the old world and the modern era. Nevertheless, while its aim is clear, the message is vague and up to interpretation. Wherever it casts its eye, Faroughi’s camera tries to register this somehow cynical dichotomy. It begins in a theater house in the old city of Isfahan that has staged Shakespeare’s Othello. There is no attentive audience and the players are detached and exhausted. A young man from amongst the audience begins a long journey into the web of narrow alleys of Isfahan and ends up in the main mosque of the city where he meets a young girl. Despite the initial chaotic situations, from its halfway point, the film begins to render a silent observation of a night that will end at the break of dawn.Read More »

The story is about two poor boy’s search for their father through a “Journey” from downtown to uptown.
Two hungry boys are forced to move through the events, people and unrealistic and risky places in a nightmare way.
A daily journey in search of their lost identity and worth! The have neither the money nor the ability to commit theft and fraud…Read More »

“Sir, when people wonder if God is a man or woman,
no one thinks God could be a woman!”

An unforgettable portrayal of innocence lost and found, STARLESS DREAMS plunges us into the lives of young teenage girls sharing temporary quarters at a juvenile detention center on the outskirts of Tehran. Director Mehrdad Oskouei, one of Iran’s most prominent filmmakers, spent seven years securing access to this all-female facility. As the New Year approaches, the girls bond, and reveal—with playfully disarming honesty—the circumstances and acts that resulted in their incarceration. They have killed their father, robbed a bank, or were arrested for carrying 651 grams of cocaine. Outside the prison walls, danger is everywhere, even within their own families.Read More »

Synopsis
Roja is drawn from Neshat’s own recurring dreams, memories and desires. The work traces a young woman’s disquieting attempts to connect with American culture while reconciling her identification with her home country of Iran.Read More »

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Divorce Iranian Style challenges preconceptions about what life is like for women in Iran. The most startling thing about the film is simply that it was made. The filmmakers follow the cases of three women who are attempting to divorce their husbands. Although Iranian religious law frowns on divorce, a man is allowed to claim the privilege without needing to show cause, provided he pays his ex-wife compensation. A woman, however, can only sue for divorce if she can prove that her husband is sterile or mad, or if he agrees to let her out of their marriage contract. In the last case, the compensation becomes the bargaining chip: the man will sometimes give his wife her freedom if he doesn’t have to pay.Read More »

“Neshat spoke to The Stranger’s Jen Graves on Tuesday, by phone from her home in New York.

I first want to talk about Zarin, the anorexic prostitute who hallucinates at the sight of her john, then flees to a women’s bath—a beautiful place, sparkling with dusty light—where she scrubs her own skin until she bleeds. A few years ago, I caught your short video portrait of her, and was never able to get her out of my mind. You’ve said her character feels the closest to you.Read More »