Top Picks
Life and a Day (Opening Night)Somayeh is at a loss. Her only desire is to leave her family and take her destiny in hand, yet the love of her sick mother holds her back. Her elder brother, introduces her to an Afghan who wants to marry her and take her to Afghanistan. Despite herself, but moved by her brother’s concern, she accepts the offer, seeing it as primarily a means of escaping her family. And then, at the very last minute, she discovers the hidden face of the marriage proposal.
A couple, actors by night, must move from their apartment because it is in danger of collapsing. Tehran’s real estate boom. At home one evening in the new apartment the wife lets in a man she assumes is her husband, returning from a rehearsal of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. The encounter leaves her wounded and psychologically damaged. And leads to a marriage crisis as her husband relentlessly pursues revenge.
A young girl informs her father that she has been kidnapped and asks him to bring the ransom money to pay for her rescue. Her father and brothers go to Tehran in search of her. However they find that she has not been kidnapped, rather she is living a vagabond lifestyle – eloped with her boyfriend and hanging out with a band of street musicians. Following the arrest of the bandleader and still full of love for her boyfriend, the young girl must tread the uncertain path in-between.
A seminal film of the ‘first Iranian New Wave,’ Ebrahim Golestan’s Brick and Mirror is essential viewing for those seeking to understand the influences of this period of film history on filmmakers as acclaimed and diverse as Kiarostami, Panahi and co. A minimalist tale of a taxi driver left with a baby in his back seat after the mother abandons the two of them, this classic branches out into a biting social commentary of Iranian society in the 60’s.
A mind bending time travel genre mashup and a historical allegory. A prisoner inside has hung himself and we are one day away from the Iranian Prime Minister being shot dead outside of the parliament building. Questions abound as a police inspector begins his investigation with the help of a sound engineer and a geologist. Years later, all evidence of the investigation is found in a box – what happened to these men, and why were they arrested?
????? The Upcoming
Lantouri (Closing Night)Lantouri, takes the name of a street gang in Tehran that robs and kidnaps people in broad daylight. The film follows Pasha, leader of the gang, and Maryam, a journalist and social activist. As their relationship breaks up, the two test each other’s ideals and ways of seeing society and its ‘victims’. This stylish social-realist drama explores the crimes committed and the frustrations of Iranian youth by way of interviews with activists, friends and hardline political commentators.
shia bliss??
After a late night meeting of the Troppo collective, we’ve agreed that your comment above warrants a yellow card Homer.
An official warning.
I will go to the Sunni side of the street then!