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Cannes film festival

Saeed Roustaee’s new film takes aim at a slippery, entitled male who thinks he can lord it over a widow he plans to marry

A strange, sad, sombre movie from Iranian director Saeed Roustaee whose last entry at Cannes was the family drama Leila’s Brothers in 2022. This is a story about the randomness of life in the big city, a melodramatic convulsion of grief, rage and pain which has a TV soap feel to its succession of escalating crises. Like Leila’s Brothers, it is about the entitlement of Iran’s menfolk, and how a man – however shiftless, casual and low-status – can somehow pull rank on a woman in the marriage market.

Payman Maadi (from Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation) plays Hamid, an ambulance driver in his late 40s with a certain roguish ladies-man charm whose unmarried status raises eyebrows among some of his acquaintances, but who...

Most of us don’t appreciate where our problems sit on a scale from ordinary to tragic. One day your frustrations relate to impressing the family of your intended husband, or to the local school’s struggles to contain your tearaway son. The next day, there are no footholds for this conventional social anxiety because the bottom has fallen out of your world.

Selling a descent from stress into a state of devastation that can never be shed (only briefly reprised) is the formidable actress Parinaz Izadyar. Remarkably, considering how often she is tasked to cry or yell, there is nothing repetitive to her performance. She keeps reacting to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with fresh volatility, not letting her character, Mahnaz, become passive or automated.

Returning to the Cannes competition lineup after 2022’s “Leila’s Brothers” Iranian melodramatist, Saeed Roustayi, proves that he has an Almodovarian flair for...

Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness Film Movement Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net linked from Rotten Tomatoes by: Harvey Karten Director: Massoud Bakhshi Writer: Massoud Bakhshi Cast: Sadaf Asgari, Behnaz Jafari, Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy, Babak Karimi, Faghiheh Soltani, Arman Darvish Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 11/6/20 Opens: December 11, 2020 If you think that the United […]

The post Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

When most reviews talk about a simple story portrayed without ceremony, it was exactly that that lead the jury to give this movie Prix de la Camera d’Or at Cannes in 1995. Though that may not have been my primary reason for watching this film, I come out adding one more director to my favourite list.

The streets of Tehran are busy with the preparations for New Year. Everyone is busy decorating their house to welcome the next year. Seven-year-old Razieh has developed a fascination for a round goldfish with a lot of fins. She wants to buy it but the price seems unreasonable to her family. After convincing her mother, she leaves with the entire money left with the family to buy presents. The little girl loses the money twice, tackles strangers, struggles with helplessness and yet does not give up. A lot goes on between...

The Audience Award of PÖFF | Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival went to the Iranian drama “When the Moon Was Full” directed by Narges Abyar. Based on a true story about the marriage between Hamid (Hootan Shakiba) – brother of the dispiteous leader of the terrorist Islamic group Jundullah (God’s Army) Abdul Malik Rigi (Armin Rahimian) and a young unsuspecting Iranian woman Faezeh (Elnaz Shakerdust), this is a film that evolves into a thriller with lots of teary pathos.

It’s love at first sight for the shop assistant Hamid and his shy customer. Not long after their first encounter at the bazaar he is – accompanied by his parents – asking for Faezeh’s hand from her mother Esmat (Shabnam Maghdami). The proposal doesn’t go as smoothly as the groom-to-be was hoping for; Esmat is worried about the cultural differences between two love birds, and even more so about the possibility...