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…
Tag: 1990s
In the early 1990s, five leading Arab film directors were asked to create a short work that expressed their thoughts and feelings about the first Gulf War and its impact on Arab people, culture and intellectual thought. The Gulf War, What Next? is the revealing and rewarding feature-length collection of these five impressive short works.
A man recollects the conflict in the middle east through his personal memory. In this short documentary, Omar Amiralay reflects on the first time he heard of Israel. Through recorded conversations with filmmaker Mohamed Malas, both Amiralay and Malas share their own unique stories and experiences about Israel and Israeli occupation. In the company of fellow Syrian filmmaker Mohammad Malas, the ground-breaking director Omar Amiralay revisits the ruins of the destroyed Golan village of Quneytra, occupied by Israel and then abandoned following the 1973 war.
Told from the perspective of two children, The Small Town describes the relationship between members of an extended family in a small Turkish town. Told in four parts which unfold with the seasons, the film is a touching and bittersweet portrait of childhood and fears. Intimately observed and beautifully shot, Ceylan’s feature debut won the Caligari Prize at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival.
In a small Welsh town, a boy lives alone with his unstable mother. The mother is determined to see that her son enter the clergy some day, but her insistence on this issue is a source of tension between the woman and her boy. As the child’s protests grow more violent, the mother’s sanity deteriorates, leading to tragedy. Years later, the son, now a grown man, returns to the town where he was born to confront his dark past.
30ish Patrick and teenage Dominic are two brothers living alone in a remote farmhouse in the Southwest of Ireland, while their mother is away traveling. When their aunt comes visiting, with her arrives Anya, a young woman from Germany who starts helping Dominic with his studies in return for a chance to improve her English. As time goes by, Patrick and Anya fall in love, while Dominic also develops feelings for the girl.
Maani Petgar‘s CINEMA CINEMA deals with the controversial and popular Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and the making of SALAAM CINEMA. The filmmaker placed an ad in the paper, with the opening words: ‘Wanted: one hundred common people who want to become actors.’ Around five thousand people reacted and fought for a role. In the following eight days, Makhmalbaf filmed thousands of applicants. During the auditions he tried to find out why they would love to act and to which extremes they would go to achieve their aim. In CINEMA CINEMA Petgar shows how the filmmaker works, manipulates and brings about effects, but also how Makhmalbaf himself is manipulated.
No one knows better than Mohsen Makhmalbaf that Iranians are movie mad, so when he placed a casting call for one hundred actors for a new film, he expected a crowd; what he got was a crush—five thousand people. After genially announcing, “You are both the subject and the actors in the film,” he begins auditions. What unfolds is a parade of individuals who, for love of cinema, are by turns brash, crafty, shy, touchingly open, unwittingly hilarious.