Iranian director Ali Reza Amini’s Namehay Bad (Letters in the Wind) is set in the familiar world of basic training. A group of uneducated cadets is abused, toughened up, and shaped by military men. Many of the young men have to make difficult adjustments to this new life. When one of the men gets the opportunity to visit Teheran, the others give him messages that they want him to deliver to their families. Letters in the Wind was screened at the Toronto Film Festival.Read More »
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Hailed as one of the masterpieces of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema, Bashu, the Little Stranger opens during an Iraqi air-raid on a small Iranian village bordering the war-front in Khuzestan. When 10-year old Bashu’s loses his home and his entire family in the raid he takes refuge in a truck that unexpectedly drives north, close to the Russian border. There he is assumed to be ‘wild’ because of his incomprehensible dialect and dark skin; only Nai, a mother of two whose husband is away for work, takes pity on him. Soon she and Bashu weave a relationship strong enough that Bashu’s traumatic experience with the war makes way for hope and trust.Read More »
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A look at the lives of 3 well-off Iranian couples who are ostensibly living an idyllic life and are going to have a get-together for a birthday party. Each couple bearing their own sordid secrets attend the party to find out what follows on the hills of the cold welcome of their host.Read More »
تجربه
A fourteen-year-old boy is employed as general assistant in a photographer’s studio, where he is also allowed to sleep. From afar, he is in love with a girl who lives in a wealthy district. One morning, he comes to offer his services at the girl’s parents’ house. There seems to be a ray of hope. But that evening the answer is negative, and final… A sort of adolescent double of the young boy in Zang-e Tafrih , the young Mamad of Tadjrebeh has a different obsession: rather than his football, he is attached here to the face of a girl, the painful result of love at first sight. Rootless and homeless, Mamad is a body borne on the flux of the town, his nameless and aimless anguish soothed by a ride round the courtyard on his elder brother’s moped or the half-bare waist of a woman followed in the crowd… Counters, doors and windows punctuate this film of absence, as well as images: the photographs which the apprentice files and stamps, mirrors of elsewhere, of another possible world.Read More »
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Two young boys are classmates: when Nader returns his friend’s notebook, the cover of which he has accidentally torn, the other is faced with two possibilities. Either he can quickly take revenge, or the two can look for a solution together, glue the book back together and remain good pals.Read More »
لباسی برای عروسی
A woman orders a suit from a tailor for her young son to wear to her sister’s wedding. The tailor’s apprentice, together with two other teenage boys who work in the same building, devise a plan to try on the suit at night to see what it feels like. Things get a little complicated but in the morning, at the last possible minute, they manage to return the suit to its proper place.Read More »
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In a Tehran hospital, a woman awaits anxiously for news about her grandchild – and she’s shattered when she learns that the baby is a girl. Outside the hospital are three young women – they’re anxious, fearful – and their attempts to leave the city are constantly thwarted. One of them, Nargess, tries unsuccessfully to make contact with her friend, Pari, who is recently out of prison and has been thrown out of her family home. Pregnant and desperate, Pari seeks help from Monir, a friend married to a Pakistani doctor.
In addition to these frightened, disenfranchised women we meet Nayereh, who is forced to abandon her little girl, and Mojgan, a prostitute. As the story spirals from one character to another, it eventually turns full circle. Read More »
Naderi’s second film is set in the slums of Tehran. Hanging out in a pool hall, Ali Khoshdast becomes involved in a brawl with three brothers, and accidently kills one of them. He runs for his life, eventually taking refuge in the home of a young woman. The victim’s brothers continue the chase, and finally close in on him. Following the murder, streets, alleys and houses that were all part of Ali’s everyday world suddenly become dangerous and hostile. Although in many ways a classic tale of revenge, Naderi uses this story to imply that an underlying violence pervades society, ready to burst forth with or without justification.Read More »
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This unusual Iranian documentary/drama is based on the true story of a poor and religious 65-year-old father who kept his two 12-year-old daughters locked in their small house from the day that they were born. Their blind mother agreed with the arrangement since she was unable to supervise them in any other way. Thanks to the concern of neighbors over the plight of Massoumeh and Zahra, a social worker looked into the matter and found the girls unable to talk or walk properly. They were given the first baths in their lives and then returned to their home. The father, believing that he has been publicly shamed by his neighbors, promises not to keep them imprisoned anymore.Read More »