Tag: Iranian Cinema
The Seed of the Sacred Fig | 2024 Cannes Film Festival Review
Way of the Gun: Rasoulof’s Bold, Blunt Indictment of Iranian Regime
There’s been little opportunity for artists to clearly or critically speak truth to power...
The Great Yawn of History | 2024 Berlin Intl. Film Festival Review
Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Rasti Hunts for Spiritual Treasures
There have been countless films about the quest for fortune and glory, but you’ll be hard-pressed...
My Favorite Cake | 2024 Berlin Intl. Film Festival Review
Layer Cake: Moghaddam & Sanaeeha Find Love in a Hopeless Place
If ever there were a film depicting how one cannot have their cake and...
Me, Maryam, the Children and 26 Others | 2024 International Film Festival Rotterdam Review
Camera Crew: Filmmakers Become Family In Farshad Hashemi’s Quietly Defiant Meta-Movie
The problem with being lonely isn’t being alone, it’s how easy it can be...
In the Land of Brothers | 2024 Sundance Film Festival Review
Family of Straw: Amirfazli & Ghasemi Present a Trilogy of Familial Tragedies
The title, of course, is a bitter irony relating to Iran’s self-anointed nickname,...
No Bears | Review
Blow-Out: Twice Told Tales Unfold in Panahi’s Layered Docufiction
Borders and Boundaries and Bears, Oh My! The perpetually hobbled Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi continues to...
Interview: Houman Seyyedi & Azad Jafarian – World War III
In anticipation for the upcoming 95th Academy Awards, I chatted with director Houman Seyyedi and screenwriter Azad Jafarian, whose film World War III is...
World War III | 2022 Venice Film Festival Review
War & Fleece: Seyyedi’s Swiftly Shifting Satire Explores the Corrupting Nature of Power
In one of the most unromanticized depictions of the filmmaking process, Iranian...
Beyond the Wall | 2022 Venice Film Festival Review
Blind Man’s Bluff: Jalilvand Plays Cheap Tricks with Overwrought Melodrama
To crib from (of all people) Margaret Thatcher, no one would remember the Good...
Leila’s Brothers | 2022 Cannes Film Festival Review
How to Beat the High Cost of Living: Roustayi Ponders Poverty in Familial Melodrama
“Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it...
Ballad of a White Cow | Review
Kismet Kisses: Moghaddam & Sanaeeha Mine Intimate Vengeance in Rich Melodrama
The opening moments of Ballad of a White Cow evokes a quote from Al-Baqarah...
Hit the Road | 2021 New York Film Festival Review
Take the Wheel, My Son: Panahi’s Character-Driven Exodus
Hit the Road is equal parts hilarious and devastating. Tracking an Iranian family while they try to...
A Hero | 2021 Cannes Film Festival Review
Purse First: Farhadi Brings Agony and Ecstasy in Latest Social Drama
Robert Burns’ eternal passage, cribbed by Steinbeck, “the best laid schemes o’ mice and...
Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness | Review
Killer Ratings: Bakhshi Brings Reality Television Gimmickry to Morbid, Potential Levels
To err is human, to forgive divine---or so we’ve come to accept as a...
Criterion Collection: Taste of Cherry | Blu-ray Review
It’s impossible to talk about Iranian cinema without mention of Abbas Kiarostami, the most prominent figure amongst a formidable coterie of names which rose...
Criterion Collection: The Koker Trilogy | Blu-ray Review
There isn’t a cinematic figure like any other, at least who straddled such a drastic historical divide of censorship, like Abbas Kiarostami, a pioneer...
Ladies They Talk About: Panahi Explores Artistic Repression in 3 Faces (2018) | Blu-ray Review
Jafar Panahi won Best Screenplay at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival for 3 Faces, his fourth feature since being banned from filmmaking by the...
3 Faces | Review
Faces, Places: Panahi Provokes the Patriarchy in Quiet Hybrid Drama
Now nearly half way through his twenty-year ban from filmmaking, (a damning sentence passed down...
Interview: Mani Haghighi – Pig | 2018 Berlin Intl. Film Festival
A thematic combination of his two last works A Dragon Arrives! (2016) and 50 Kilos of Sour Cherries (2016), Mani Haghighi's latest film follows the...