Tag: Iranian Cinema
It Was Just an Accident | Review
Phantom Limb: Panahi Treads Ripples of Retribution
Jafar Panahi continues to poke the bear with It Was Just an Accident, his latest being another film...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 10 – Saeed Roustayi’s ‘Woman and Child’
Iranian filmmaker Saeed Roustaee (also spelled Saeed Roustayi - I know its annoying) became part of the Cannes family when he gave us the...
Woman and Child | 2025 Cannes Film Festival Review
All the Regime Allows: Roustaee Finds a Woman Scorned
If there were ever an equivalent to the Hollywood ‘woman’s film’ genre in Iranian cinema it...
2025 Cannes Critics’ Panel: Day 8 – Jafar Panahi’s ‘It Was Just an Accident’
Jafar Panahi might be more synonymous with Berlin say over Cannes, but he has left his mark with the likes of 1995 Camera d'Or...
World War III | 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...
The Seed of the Sacred Fig | 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...
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...
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...
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...
