Amidst the wreckage beneath the ruined statue of the Buddha, thousands of families struggle to survive. Baktay, a six-year-old Afghan girl is challenged to go to school by her neighbour’s son who reads in front of their cave. Having found the money to buy a precious notebook, and taking her mother’s lipstick for a pencil, Baktay sets out. On her way, she is harassed by boys playing games that mimic the terrible violence they have witnessed, that has always surrounded them. The boys want to stone the little girl, to blow her up as the Taliban blew up the Buddha, to shoot her like Americans. Will Baktay be able to escape these violent war games and reach the school?
Tag: IRAN
As a renowned author, Mahmoud feels pressure to compose his next great novel, but he is suffering from writer’s block. He harkens back to a happier time when he was a shy, awkward 11-year-old on his family’s lush estate in Tehran. He recalls his 14-year-old cousin, a tomboy who is nonetheless a ravishing beauty. She revels in the power that she has over him. That adolescent girl of long ago—or the memory of her—becomes the muse that inspires him.
This highly symbolic Iranian drama (shot in black-and-white) revolves around the most important figure in a remote rural village. That figure is the village’s sole cow, owned by Mashdi Hassan. The beginning of the film makes clear just how vital the cow is to the life of the village and how much Mashdi and his neighbors cherish it. When the cow is threatened and then killed by members of a nearby clan, Mashdi becomes so distraught that he is gradually transformed into a cow himself. One highlight of this film is the glimpse it offers into a style of rural life which has gone unchanged for thousands of years.
Leila is a kind-hearted and loving woman whose marriage to Reza starts off happily. But when she learns that she is infertile, her life changes rapidly. Devastated by the news, Leila finds herself under growing pressure from Reza’s mother to let him take a second wife to bear his children, and what follows is a profound psychological study of a woman swept away on a complex emotional journey. Led by two wonderful performances by Leila Hatami (Leila) and Jamileh Sheikhi as Reza’s manipulative mother, this is a powerful and thought-provoking drama that doesn’t disappoint.
While on the surface Mr. Gullible contains all the hallmarks of a good comedy, at its heart this movie portrays with uncommon clarity the pitfalls of love and the pain of betrayal. When the protagonist leaves his small village and travels to Tehran to find a wife, he does so with all the gusto and naivete of one who has not experienced the world. Yet even when Mr. Gullible encounters some of the harsh realities of the big city, he is not dissuaded from accomplishing his mission to find a bride. When he finally meets what he believes is the perfect woman, Mr Gullible showers her with gifts and asks her to marry him. However, his romantic visions of life with his lady love are obliterated when he discovers her true identity
Dariush Mehrjui’s Hamoun is a psychological comedy/drama about a bumbling Iranian intellectual, Hamid Hamoun. Trying and failing to complete a philosophical tract on love, Hamoun cannot seem to convince his wife Mashid, who is a successful artist, to love him either. Hamoun’s refusal to accept reality, or grant Mashid a divorce, is both character study and metaphor for a condition of modern urban life in Iran.
A young boy is locked into his apartment when his mother goes out and must care for his baby brother and cope with various domestic catastrophes while his grandmother and a neighbor try to locate his mother or the key to the apartment.
On his 40th birthday, a man engineers a revolt against himself. He telephones his lovers — all four of them — and arranges to meet them at his dance school that afternoon. The women are shocked to discover that they have been sharing the affections of the same man. He arrives and tries to explain his actions. He has realized that time is limited for each of us. Total honesty is the only answer. One by one we review the beginning of each affair. The man and his lovers discuss passion, possession, time.