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Exclusive: Goodfellas has acquired world sales rights for Iranian director Ali Asgari’s satire Divine Comedy, following a filmmaker’s mission to dodge censorship, ahead of its world premiere in Venice’s Orizzonti sidebar.

The dark comedy, satirizing Iranian film censorship and bureaucratic absurdity, draws on Asgari’s own experiences in his native Iran, where he was slapped with a travel ban and had his personal belongings confiscated after showing his film Terrestrial Verses in Cannes Un Certain Regard in 2023.

The new feature follows 40-year-old filmmaker Bahram who has spent his entire career making films in Turkish-speaking Iranian Azerbaijan in northwestern Iran, none of which have ever been screened in the country.

When his latest work is once again denied permission by the Ministry of Culture, the censorship pushes him to the edge of defiance.

With his sharp-tongued, Vespa-riding producer Sadaf by his side, Bahram embarks on an underground...

Belgian filmmaker Tim Mielants’ feature Steve, starring Cillian Murphy, has been added to the Platform lineup for this year’s Toronto Film Festival.

Steve was among nine titles added to the Platform competition Tuesday morning. Those titles are: Farnoosh Samadi’s Between Dreams and Hope, Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani’s Bouchra, György Pálfi’s Hen, Pauline Loquès’ Nino, Bretten Hannam’s Sk+te’kmujue’katik (At the Place of Ghosts), Milagros Mumenthaler’s The Currents, Yoon Ga-eun’s The World of Love, Valentyn Vasyanovych’s To the Victory! and Kasia Adamik’s Winter of the Crow.

The Platform jury will be headed by Carlos Marqués-Marcet, who won the 2024 Platform Award for They Will Be Dust. He will be joined by Oscar-nominated actor, writer, composer and director Marianne Jean-Baptiste, most recently at the festival in 2024 with Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, and Québécois filmmaker Chloé Robichaud, whose Sundance title Two...

Looking for the next Barry Jenkins, Pietro Marcello, William Oldroyd, or Darius Marder? Let the Toronto International Film Festival’s auteur-focused and discovery-minded Platform section help.

Today, the festival has announced its 2025 Platform program lineup, marking the tenth anniversary of the fest’s auteur competitive section, which “champions bold directorial vision and distinctive storytelling.”

This year’s edition features 10 films representing 19 countries. The program opens with the World Premiere of “Steve,” from Belgian director Tim Mielants, starring Tracey Ullman and Academy Award–winner Cillian Murphy. The film is Mielants’ first appearance at TIFF and his third collaboration with Murphy.

Per usual, the section is juried by a three-person team of luminaries. This year, they include Jury Chair and Spanish film writer, editor, and director Carlos Marqués-Marcet, who won the 2024 Platform Award for “They Will Be Dust.” He is joined by Oscar-nominated actor, writer, composer, and director Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who was...

The Cillian Murphy-starring drama Steve, from director Tim Mielants and Netflix, will open the 2025 Platform competition at the Toronto Film Festival, organizers said Tuesday.

Adapted by Max Porter from his novella Shy, Steve has Oscar winner Murphy playing a headteacher during a pivotal day for students at a last-chance reform school and in a world that has left them behind. As Steve deals with his own trauma, he meets Shy (Jay Lycurgo), a troubled teen also caught between a dark past and an uncertain future.

Tracey Ullman, Simbi Ajikawo and Emily Watson also star in Steve, which will hit Netflix on Oct. 3. On Tuesday, Toronto unveiled in all 10 features for the festival section where international films outside of the Hollywood studio orbit compete.

There’s a rare international premiere in the section for Pauline Loquès Nino, which bowed in Cannes and has rising star Theodore Pellerin playing a young...

The first vignette in the Tehran-set Terrestrial Verses observes a man (Bahram Ark) in a hospital trying to register the name of his newborn child. Another shows a rideshare driver, Sadaf (Sadaf Asgari), trying to reclaim her impounded car. The film, written and directed by Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami, is an assemblage of nine such sequences with no overarching plot or recurring characters. They are all, instead, united by a purposefully minimalist style as they traverse a broader subject matter: Each one unfolds in a lengthy static shot centered on an Iranian citizen arguing with an off-screen authority figure.

The level of conflict differs between each vignette, with some people in a better position to argue than others. But in every scenario, the focal characters are told that their desires are unreasonable or that their behaviors are aberrant, sometimes both. The man in the hospital, for one, submits a name for his child,...

“Money is all that matters”

The sentiment echoes throughout Behrooz Karamizade’s moving and melancholy debut, even though it is initially driven by love. Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasic) and Narges (Sadaf Asgari) are desperate to be together but tradition dictates that he needs to get together a hefty dowry before they can approach her parents. The Iranian-German director establishes the pair of them as sympathetic from the off as we see Amir lose his waiting job after taking a moral stance on something his boss wants him to do - a stand that Narges endorses.

With work hard to find, however, Amir has little option but to take a position at a far-flung fishery outside of the city where the work is hard and the moral waters distinctly murky. The day job is less than lucrative and thanks to Amir’s strong swimming ability - an attribute, like much here,...

It’s hard to watch “Empty Nets” and not think of “Luzzu,” the recent, poignant Sundance prizewinner from Malta: In both films, enterprising young men left in the lurch by a national financial crisis must resort to black-market fishing to, well, stay afloat. (All we need is a third film paddling in such forbidden waters to declare a new neo-realist trend.) In “Luzzu,” the protagonist was a lifelong fisherman passionate about his trade, while Behrooz Karamizade’s lean, engrossing, Iran-set debut centers on a handy novice merely looking to make a quick buck. In this economy, however, such differences prove immaterial. It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from, unless you’re coming from money: You’re otherwise all sinking below the surface.

Premiering in the main competition at Karlovy Vary, this is a confidently quiet, elegiac first feature from Iranian-German writer-director Karamizade — who brings a certain European arthouse...

The only way Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasi) and Narges (Sadaf Asgari) can spend time together is in their secret, open ‘living room' in a never finished luxury hotel overlooking one of the long, sandy beaches of the Caspian Sea in North Iran. The concrete shell, long time abandoned by its makers, serves as their zone of comfort, where they dream about a bright future together. The problem is that Amir comes from a poor, working class family and Narges is a daughter of wealthy, influential parents who want to secure her future by finding an ideal suitor who won't have trouble paying a sky-rocket high dowry.

The film kicks off with a scene in which the lovebirds spend time on a completely desolated beach, but although there is no one to be seen, Narges refuses to join her boyfriend for a swim. In his boyish desire to impress, he will...

A gritty slice of neorealism that would have fit in perfectly during the peak period of the Iranian New Wave, Empty Nets (Leere Netze) marks an impressive feature debut for Iranian German filmmaker Behrooz Karamizade. Premiering at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, this drama about a financially impoverished twentysomething desperately attempting to earn the money he needs to marry his girlfriend packs an enduring punch.

When we’re introduced to Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasi), he’s deeply in love with both the sea, in which he’s seen playfully frolicking like a dolphin in an early scene, and his girlfriend Narges (a radiant Sadaf Asgari), who obviously shares his affections. It also becomes clear that he’s a young man of integrity when he loses his job at a catering hall after loudly objecting to his boss’ decision to cancel a wedding at the last minute because of unpaid fees.

You know the modern world is in a dark place when even a middle-aged Iranian woman says that things were better in the old days. Indeed, for his feature debut, director Behrooz Karamizade has fashioned an intelligent and thoughtful drama that should travel well in today’s climate of insecurity, offering a fresh perspective on a multiplicity of worldwide issues while adding an especially nuanced subplot exploring the refugee crisis and the mechanics of people-trafficking.

The setting is rural Iran, on the coast of the Caspian Sea, where twentysomething Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasi) is struggling to make ends meet. Amir is in love with Narges (Sadaf Asgari) and wants to marry her, but Narges comes from a traditional family who think Amir is beneath her and plan to marry their daughter to the highest bidder. After a date at the funfair, where she narrowly dodges a relative,...

A locked-off camera can convey many things — watchfulness, stealthiness, clinical remove or elegant restraint — but seldom is it as evocatively accusatory as in Alireza Khatami and Ali Asgari’s “Terrestrial Verses.” Here, its use over a series of stationary vignettes, bookended by dramatic images of urban collapse, becomes an increasingly inspired choice even as the themes start to repeat and the resonances with the ongoing Women Life Freedom movement in Iran become more apparent. Putting the viewer in the uncomfortable position of interviewer/interrogator in nine encounters between everyday Iranians and some manner of authority figure, this is punchy first-person filmmaking, from the point of view of the last person you want to be.

Some of the stories are mildly comedic in tone, especially early on. In the first of cinematographer Adib Sobhani’s crisp, boxed-in 4:3 compositions, we are introduced to a father (Bahram Ark) being chastised for not...

A daunting task faces the protagonists in Terrestrial Verses (Ayeh haye zamini): Each of them is trying to reason with a government bureaucrat or other self-important authority figure. They’re all residents of Tehran, and there’s something specific to Iran in the oppressive regulations and catch-22s that hinder them, but there’s universal resonance, too, in the escalating lunacy and bleak implications.

In 10 of the feature’s 11 subtly interlocking segments, a single character faces an offscreen interlocutor. The fixed camera holds each one in an unwavering embrace as they try to make sense of arbitrary rules and demands. Inspired by the intricate rhymes of ghazal, a classic form of Persian poetry, writer-directors Ali Asgari and Alireza Khatami have constructed a thoroughly modern work of bracing concision, elegance and blistering deadpan humor, one that pulses with sorrow and outrage over the absurdity of authoritarian dictates that aim to crush souls.

Launching with the opening night world premiere of Marc Turtletaub’s “Jules,” a crowdpleaser sales title starring Ben Kingsley, the 26th annual Sonoma International Film Festival (March 22-26) drew its highest audience attendance to date. The wine country film festival combined a robust film slate programmed by newly appointed artistic director Carl Spence (working with Executive Director Ginny Krieger), from upcoming specialty fare like Paul Schrader’s “The Master Gardener,” starring Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver, and Searchlight’s period biopic “Chevalier,” starring Kelvin Harrison Jr., with a smattering of yummy wine and food events with top chefs, from Martin Yan’s Shaking Beef with Three Onions to Joanne Weir’s herb-covered goat cheese tarte.

The five-day festival curated by Spence along with senior programmers Amanda Salazar and Ken Jacobson, showcased 110 films, including seven films making their US premieres as well as films acclaimed on the festival circuit. Thirty-two countries...

Ali Asgari started studying film directing when he moved to Italy, with experience already gathered in the field as an assistant producer and assistant director in Iran. He made his first short film “Tonight Is Not a Good Night For Dying” (2011) as a freshman, and stayed faithfull to the short format ever since. “Until Tomorrow“, his sophomore feature length drama that has just screened in Berlinale’s Panorama section, was also supposed to be a short drama, but the topic was of such importance for the Iranian director that he felt the urge to tell the story in more detail.

In the script co-written with Alireza Khatami, Asgari shows one afternoon in the life of a single mother Fereshteh (played by the fantastic Sadaf Asgari) who, after her parents announce their sudden arrival to Tehran, is frantically looking for a sleep-over for her out-of-the-wedlock baby daughter just for one night.

Fereshteh (Sadaf Asgari) needs help ‘only’ until the next day, but this will prove dificult since she is asking for a dangerous kind of favour. She is in a position no young woman in Iran would like to be in: a single mom with a baby out of wedlock that nobody but one person knows about. Asgari plots his story around the consequences of a love affair that, in certain societies, weigh heavy on women who are expected to do everything ‘by the book’: wait with sex until they get married and only then start a family.

Until Tomorrow screened at Berlin International Film Festival

In the opening couple of minutes, there is nothing strange about a young mother taking care of her baby. Fereshteh looks tired but happy, and also, she seems to be doing fine job-wise as a freelance graphic designer. So, when a phonecall from her...

The 2022 Berlin International Film Festival has revealed its first titles, including seven films that have been invited to the Berlinale Special program. You can see the full list of confirmed films below.

Those seven include Peter Flinth’s Against The Ice, starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Joe Cole, Heida Reed and Charles Dance, and Laurent Larivière’s About Joan, starring Isabelle Huppert, which both play as Berlinale Special Galas.

The Panorama program has unveiled 13 titles, with Generation confirming eight features, and further films set for Forum and Forum Expanded.

The Panorama strand includes Myanmar Diaries, a doc/feature hybrid from the Myanmar Film Collective that highlights violence suffered by Burmese citizens.

“The pandemic has created distances – not only between people but also the way we see the world. Amongst the 2022 selection are films shot during the pandemic, reflecting on how it feels to be disconnected from others. It is with this first...

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.

Known for her impressive short films The Silence and Gaze, Iranian filmmaker Farnoosh Samadi makes her feature debut with family drama 180 Degree Rule (Khate Farzi). It explores how one seemingly simple decision made by a parent can be drastically life-changing.

Based on a friend of Samadi’s real-life experience, this story set in Tehran follows teacher Sara (Sahar Dolatshahi) who is married to Hamed (Pejman Jamshidi). Their relationship feels strained when we first encounter them, like a union of convenience to care for their young daughter Raha. Sara wants to go to a family wedding in the North, but Hamed is not so keen. He is suddenly called away on a work trip, and forbids his wife from going. Sara makes the decision to go with her daughter anyway, but in secret. The consequences of her actions have a dire effect, with her resorting to secrets and lies upon Hamed’s return.

Shab-e Yalda or Shab-e Chelleh takes place in the night of winter solstice and is an old traditional festivity, practiced in Afghanistan, Iran and Tajikistan. It is a time to celebrate with the family, to get together, read traditional poetry and connect to the lighting of a big fire which should resemble light and hope in this night which is supposed to be the longest and darkest. According to Iranian director Massoud Bakhshi, the custom has always held a certain fascination for him, rooting back to his childhood when he celebrated Shab-e Yalda with his family in Tehran. The idea of hope as symbolized by the event was also a main inspiration for his 2019 feature “Yalda”, a story about forgiveness, but also how tradition creates a front for repression, antiquated concepts of gender and revenge as well as the exploitation of misery performed by the media.

On the night of...

Drama also nominated for Generation 14-plus Crystal Bear in Berlin.

Film Movement has picked up all Us rights from Pyramide International to Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness, winner of this year’s world cinema dramatic competition grand jury prize at Sundance.

The distributor plans to release Iranian director Massoud Bakhshi’s second dramatic feature theatrically in the fourth quarter of this year, followed by home entertainment and digital launches.

Yalda was also nominated for the Generation 14-plus Crystal Bear at the Berlinale and takes place almost entirely within the studio of Iran’s most popular reality TV show, Joy Of Forgiveness.

With the first Sundance Film Festival of the new decade wrapping up today, the award winners have been announced. Leading the pack is Minari, which picked up U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic, and Boys State, which was awarded U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary. It was also announced that Tabitha Jackson will be the new director of the festival, following John Cooper’s departure.

Check out the full winner list below, along with links to our reviews where available, and return for our wrap-up. See our complete coverage here.

2020 Sundance Film Festival Feature Film Awards

The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary was presented to: Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine, for Boys State / U.S.A. — In an unusual experiment, a thousand 17-year-old boys from Texas join together to build a representative government from the ground up.

The U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic was presented to: Lee Isaac Chung,...

The Sundance Film Festival had its share of big deals this year, from the record-setting $17,500,000.69 that Neon and Hulu paid for Palm Springs to a pair of $12 million deals for The Night House (Searchlight) and Uncle Frank (Amazon).

With the powder still settling, the 2020 fest handed out its annual awards Saturday night in a ceremony at Basin Fieldhouse in Park City, where it also revealed that Tabitha Jackson has been named the new Director, succeeding the retiring John Cooper.

Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari was the big winner tonight, taking both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the U.S. Dramatic Competition. Based on Chung’s real life, the drama follows a Korean-American family that moves from L.A. to Arkansas to chase the American Dream.

Other films that have managed to take the top two awards at the fest recently include Birth of a Nation in...

Imagine a high-ratings, high-stakes game show that trivializes a convict’s life-or-death fate for public consumption. As wild as it sounds, a version of this reality TV entertainment apparently really exists in modern-day Iran, where writer-director Massoud Bakhshi’s “Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness” is set, and where a wildly popular edition of it has been airing for nearly a decade. Using that as an inspiration, Bakhshi unfolds “Yalda” entirely within one such controversial televised program, while navigating concepts like male entitlement, social order and media exploitation with mixed results. Even though there are multifarious ideas here around penitence and forgiveness as linchpins of Islam, “Yalda” eventually neglects the darker avenues of these themes wrapped inside an eye-for-an-eye justice model, guided by a firm religious code.

It’s a shame, since “Yalda” gets off to an absorbing start with the story of Maryam (Sadaf Asgari), a vulnerable young woman on...

Massoud Bahkshi’s tensely potent “Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness” has the dramatic momentum to keep you enthralled but is the furthest thing from a comfortable watch. Taking place over the course of one long night, ‘Yalda,” circles the dressing room dread of a young Iranian woman named Maryam (Sadaf Asgari), who has been condemned to death for the murder of her husband Nasser, an act which Maryam vehemently maintains was an accident, though she was seen running away from the scene of the crime.

Read More: The 25 Most Anticipated Movies Of The 2020 Sundance Film Festival

Maryam’s last chance to be pardoned rests in the hands-on Nasser’s resentful daughter, Mona (Behnaz Jafari).

Continue reading ‘Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness’ Has Dramatic Momentum But Leans Too Hard Into Sensationalism [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Massoud Bakhshi’s second feature, “Yalda, a Night for Forgiveness,” has its world premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Dramatic Competition, to be screened without the director.

The pic’s production company, Jba Production, and sales outfit, Pyramide International, issued a joint statement on Jan. 14 explaining that the director won’t be attending due to the U.S.-Iran crisis, adding that Bakhshi’s “position is delicate, given the current tensions between the two countries.”

In an exclusive interview with Variety, Jba Production’s Jacques Bidou and Marianne Dumoulin, chronicled the complex task of producing Bakhshi’s second feature. They also produced his 2012 Cannes-player, “A Respectable Family,” about corruption in his country, which is still banned in Iran.

Bidou and Dumoulin have been working together for 27 years and as joint producers at Jba Production for the past 20 years. They have produced 44 feature films, shot in 22 countries, and have enjoyed a...

Director will not attend festival due to flare-up in tensions between Us and Iran.

Iranian drama Yalda, A Night For Forgiveness will premiere in Sundance as planned even if director Massoud Bakhshi will not attend due to the flare-up in tensions between the Us and Iran, its French producers and sales agent have confirmed.

“Massoud Bakhshi is proud the film was selected by Sundance and is happy for it to be screened in public there,” Paris-based Jba Production company and sales company Pyramide International said in a statement. “He has never considered asking for it to be withdrawn, on the contrary,...