Haus aus Sand und Nebel

Vadim Perelman's "House of Sand and Fog" looks at the way that goals can have terrible outcomes for all interested parties. When a woman loses her home for nonpayment of taxes, she stops at nothing to reclaim it, even as an Iranian refugee family buys it. What caught my eye is that both she and the new family have suffered adversity: her husband abandoned her, and the patriarch - a colonel in the old country - now works menial jobs. This house may have a beautiful view of the Pacific Ocean, but what happens over the course of the movie is anything beautiful. It is a REAL downer.

While due credit should go to Jennifer Connelly as the original owner and Ben Kingsley as the patriarch, I think that a lot of credit should go to Shohreh Aghdashloo as the matriarch. Simply trying to hold her family together while still agonizing over the loss of their livelihood in the old country, she's a delicate but benevolent person. This is one of the most depressing movies out there, but I think that it's something that everyone should see.

PS: The son mentions SAVAK. SAVAK was the Shah's security force from 1957 to 1979. Amnesty International reported that it had the worst human rights record on the planet.