News

“I watched a very bad print of my father’s Shatranj-e-Baad [Chess of the Wind] when I was 12 and I remember watching Cries and Whispers. We didn’t have a TV but we had a VHS player,” Iranian filmmaker Amin Aslani told me over Zoom when I asked about his childhood during a conversation on Chess of the Wind (1976), the long-lost feature debut of his father, Mohammed Reza Aslani. “You can imagine what it’s like to be 12 and watching the films without understanding any word, seeing all these scary images. So psychologically, I don't know what happened to us.” Mohammad Reza Aslani and his wife, Soudabeh Fazaeli were poets of the Iranian New Wave, both members of the She'er-e-Digar and Nathr-e-Digar literary movements. “Growing up with parents like them, it's like not living on earth. It was like living on the moon or another planet,” added Gita Aslani Shahrestani,...

"My lady, you should have confronted him earlier." Janus Films + Criterion Collection have released a new trailer for a 4K restoration of a long-lost, banned-from-the-world Iranian film titled Chess of the Wind, originally Shatranj-e baad. It first premiered in 1976 at the Tehran Film Festival, and has been updated and restored from the original copy for a 4K re-release this year. What's it about? The first lady of a noble house has died and now there is conflict between the remainders for taking over her inheritance. Starring Fakhri Khorvash, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, Akbar Zanjanpour, and Academy Award-nominated Shohreh Aghdashloo. Chess of the Wind screened publicly just three times before it was then banned by Iran's new government and then lost for decades – until the original negative was discovered by the director's children in a junk shop and restored under the auspices of Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project. The restoration had...

Although features such as “Close-Up” (1990) received high praise from international critics, making it possible for director Abbas Kiarostami to seek financial backing for his projects in other countries, producing new features in his home country Iran proved to be increasingly difficult. Iranian authorities accused the director of becoming Westernized because of the use of Western music, especially classic, and also showing a rather clichéd image of Iran. However, Kiarostami still returned to the village of Koker, the setting of “Where is the Friend’s House”, to tell yet another story, inspired by one incident during the filming of one scene in “And Life Goes On”. The two actors, a boy and a girl, both local, had to do a scene together, but something was off and there was a certain tension between the two of them, which Kiarostami investigated further, uncovering a story of lost love and disappointment closely linked...

“The Chess Game of the Wind” is a film whose actual story is at least as interesting as the movie itself. It only screened twice in Tehran in 1976, received extremely bad reviews, and after the Iranian Revolution, it disappeared completely, since the themes of homosexuality and feminism (among others) did not sit well with the Khomeini regime. However, it was rediscovered in a Tehran antique shop in 2015, and was presented back to its director, who managed to “smuggle” it out of the country. Eventually, it was delivered for restoration in Paris, overseen by Martin Scorsese’s non-profit organization, The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project, in association with the Cineteca di Bologna. (Source: The Guardian). Which makes even more interesting how Park Chan-wook watched and was inspired for “The Handmaiden”.

“The Chess Game of the Wind” is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival

The story takes place mostly inside a manor,...

During a particularly nasty argument early in The Chess Game of the Wind, autocratic patriarch Amoo (Mohamad Ali Keshavarz) scolds his two sons for speaking in naïve absolutes. “Always is something for God,” he grouses with the faith of a confidence man. Taking advantage of life’s uncertainties feels like second nature to this snake, whose wealthy wife has just died and left him with the spoils of her family fortune, much to the chagrin of the matriarch’s grown paraplegic daughter (Fakhri Khorvash) and her conniving maid (Shohreh Aghdashloo in her first role).

At each other’s throats from the very beginning, these begotten characters are trapped in the same dusty mansion, each trying to figure out the next power move that will render their opponents penniless and ashamed. Verbal lashings slowly devolve into more deceptive acts of aggression. All the while, a piercing score of wind instruments bellows through the once lavish interiors.

Stars: Babek Ahmed Poor, Farhad Kheradmand, Mohamad Ali Keshavarz, Zarifeh Shiva, Buba Bayour, Khodabakhsh Defaei | Written and Directed by Abbas Kiarostami

They may not have a breakneck pace, and they may seem unbearably light on explicit incident, but Abbas Kiarostami’s Koker Trilogy did the shared universe thing two decades before Marvel perfected the formula. Each film is a deeply humanistic fable in its own right and each is woven into the fabric of the others. Together they show just how powerfully mind-bending the use of sequels can be.

The first part, Where Is The Friend’s House?, starts simply. One day at school, Ahmed (Babek Ahmed Poor) witnesses his friend Mohammad Reda (Ahmed Ahmed Poor) being told off by their teacher for forgetting his notebook. Reda is on his last warning – one more strike and he’s expelled. When Ahmed gets home, he realises he’s accidentally picked up Reda’s notebook.