In a fit of calculated desperation, a young woman (Marziyeh Rezaei) fires off several electronic cries-for-help to celebrated Iranian actress Behnaz Jafari (playing herself). When her pleas go unanswered, Rezaei construes the rejection as an excuse to document her hanging — in chilling long-take — and implicate Jafari in the …
The opening-credits sequence alone, a closeup of hands at work on mending a shoe, is more enriching than most entire movies. And the following hour and a half are loaded with no less solid information on life today in Iran, its streets, its shops, its schools, its houses. The plot …
Grim survey of the woman's lot in Iran (especially the woman, for whatever reason, outside the law), shot in a stark, spare, semi-documentary style. Like La Ronde (otherwise a very different movie), it has no one focal character, but keeps passing the baton as in a relay race. It can …
Closed Curtain arrives with more than its share of baggage. Do yourself a favor and spend a few moments reading up on filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s plight before taking in his movie. The Iranian government has placed the master director under house arrest for six years — with an additional 20-year …
Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi's entry into the world of a blind boy, a triumph of humility and empathy. The boy's openness to the world around him in contrast to his father's insulation from it is a constant theme: the soundtrack, in one instance, quiets down to just the distant birdcall …
It begins with an armed robbery at a jewelry store, a shooting, and a suicide — though the single-take camera seems more concerned with the symmetry of the composition and the rectangle of light at the center of the shot than it is with the people inside the store or …
Still barred from officially making movies, the house arrest has been lifted and Jafar Panahi is now free to move about the countryside. It’s life and death in the backseat of a cab as Panahi tools around Tehran in search of flailing arms and predetermined passengers. The fares range from …
With six years sobriety in tow, Abel Ferrara awards himself with an autobiographical AA coin of a movie. His sixth collaboration with Willem Dafoe, this is a typical family affair for the controversial filmmaker. Filmed in the director’s apartment in Rome, Dafoe stars opposite Ferrara’s wife (Cristina Chiriac) and three-year-old …
A real-time movie, and a somewhat dragging-time movie. It's one hour, twenty-eight minutes, thirty seconds to New Year in Tehran, and we set off with a frowny seven-year-old girl on her all-consuming quest for the perfect goldfish (chubby, not skinny) as the traditional decoration. The difficulties are more exasperating than …