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Children of Heaven
Release Date: 2002-09-03
Sales rank: 4222
Triumphant prizewinner at many prestigious film festivals, this uplifting, crowd-pleasing story of family and love was also nominated for an Academy Award(R) as Best Foreign Language Film. When Ali loses his sister Zahra's school shoes, this young pair dream up a plan to stay out of trouble: they'll share his shoes and keep it a secret from their parents! But if they're going to sucessfully cover their tracks, Ali and Zahra must carefully watch their step on what rapidly turns into a funny and heartwarming adventure! A magical motion picture acclaimed by critics and audiences alike, CHILDREN OF HEAVEN is a charming treat you'll love too.Majid Majidi celebrates the immediacy and essence of childhood in this delightful tale of a brother and sister who share a pair of shoes when the boy (though no fault of his own) loses his sister's only pair. Since their parents are too poor to afford a new pair, they keep it a secret, trading them off every day in a mad rush, jumping gutters and navigating the twisting lanes to their schools and back. Then the boy hatches a plan: the third-place prize in a student footrace is a new pair of shoes, and he's determined to take it. The plot may smack of a Disney film, but the direction couldn't be more different. The family scenes are delicately observed, and Majidi captures the spirit of the children perfectly: proud, emotional, petulant, sweet, and disarmingly sincere. The film has a Western-friendly framework without losing the naturalistic eye and lolling rhythm that gives the best Iranian films their richness. Even as he builds to the climactic footrace (quite unexpectedly turned into a nail-biting contest) the film continues to reveal a wealth of discreet surprises, culminating in a conclusion all the more resonant for its sublime delicacy. His efforts earned the film the honor of becoming the first Iranian feature to earn an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film. --Sean Axmaker |
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Osama
Release Date: 2004-04-27
Sales rank: 20048
Inspired by a true story, this Golden GlobeÂ(r)-winning* drama is the first film made in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Hailed by critics as 'stunning (Entertainment Weekly), breathtaking (Slant) and 'emotionally charged (Screen International), Osama is a striking work of cinematic art (L.A. Weekly). After the brutal Taliban regime bans women from working and forbids them to leave their homes without a male escort, a 12-year old girland her mother find themselves on the brink of starvation. With nowhere left to turn, the mother disguises her daughter as a boy. Now called Osama, the young girl embarks on a terrifying and confusing journey as she tries to keep the Taliban from discovering her true identity. *2003: Foreign Language FilmThe first movie produced by Afghanistan filmmakers after the fall of the Taliban, Osama is a searing portrait of life under the oppressive fundamentalist regime. Because women are not allowed to work, a widow disguises her young daughter (Marina Golbahari) as a boy so they won't starve to death. Simply walking the streets is frightening enough, but when the disguised girl is rounded up with all the boys in the town for religious training, her peril becomes absolutely harrowing. Golbahari's face--beautiful but taut with terror--is riveting. The movie captures both her plight and the miseries of daily life in spare, vivid images. At one point, her mother is nearly killed for exposing her feet while riding on the back of a bicycle; for the entire scene, the camera shows only her feet, with the spokes of the wheel radiating out behind as she lowers her burka over them. --Bret Fetzer |
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The Color of Paradise
Release Date: 2000-09-19
Sales rank: 15517
A fable of childs innocence and a complex look at faith and humanity. Visually magnificient and wrenchingly moving the film tells the story of a boy whose inability to see the world only enhances his ability to feel its powerful forces. Studio: Sony Pictures Home Ent Release Date: 06/24/2008 Starring: Moshen Ramezani Run time: 90 minutes Rating: Pg Director: Majid MajidiMajid Majidi, whose delightful Children of Heaven became the first Iranian film ever nominated for an Oscar, returns to the subject of children for this lush and lovely--if contrived--melodrama. A spirited blind boy with a passion for learning and life arrives home for a three-month break. He's loved by his giggly little sisters and adored by his gentle granny, but his widowed, self-pitying father sees him as a burden and is determined to foist him off on someone else before he remarries--specifically, a kindly blind carpenter who welcomes the boy with all his heart. Majidi is at his best exploring the texture of the boy's world--little hands feeling their way through a garden, the sounds of metal pencils punching out Braille pages, the shuffle of fingers on paper--and his imagery is delicate and lush. The story descends into scripted tragedy and a contrived, action-packed climax (unusual for a cinema known for its restraint), and the emotional tenor turns sentimental and cloying, but Majidi turns it all around with an astounding, heartbreakingly powerful final image. If there is one thing many Iranian films have in common, it's an unerring sense of how to end a film. This is one of the most affecting ever: beautiful, moving, simple, a glowing moment that crystallizes the entire movie. --Sean Axmaker |
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Baran
Release Date: 2002-10-22
Sales rank: 28882
Winner for Best Film at the Montreal Film Festival, this wonderfully romantic and uplifting story is from the acclaimed director of the Academy Award(R) nominee CHILDREN OF HEAVEN (Best Foreign Language Film, 1999). In a Tehran building site, a 17-year-old Iranian named Lateef is known more for his playful antics than his hard work. Then things take an unexpected turn when an Afghan coworker falls from the building and the worker's son, Rahmat, enters the scene to become the new provider for his family. But even as Lateef finds himself irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, it's not until the revelation of Rahmat's secret (that he is actually a young woman, posing as a man) that both of their lives are forever changed! A humorous and moving love story of the most romantic kind -- critics everywhere have declared this delightfully entertaining motion picture as one not to be missed! |
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The Wind Will Carry Us
Release Date: 2002-09-17
Sales rank: 45226
The movies of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami defy the expectations of anyone raised on Hollywood or even European films. The Wind Will Carry Us, for example, is about a filmmaker who comes to a small village where an old woman is dying, hoping to document a harsh ritual of mourning practiced by the villagers. Unfortunately for him, the invalid clings to life, and he spends most of his time driving up and down a mountainside because his cell phone only gets good reception at the top. But while he waits and frets, around him the life of the village continues, and this vitality--captured in moments that seem like a diversion from the movie's supposed storyline--is fundamentally what The Wind Will Carry Us is about. What seems dull one moment will suddenly become a rich and subtle expression of human behavior. A strikingly different cinematic experience. --Bret Fetzer |
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Taste of Cherry - Criterion Collection
Release Date: 1999-06-08
Sales rank: 42547
Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry is an emotionally complex meditation on life and death. Middle-aged Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) drives through the hilly outskirts of Tehran-searching for someone to rescue or bury him. Criterion is proud to present the DVD premiere of Taste of Cherry in a beautiful widescreen transfer. Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami won the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for this contemplative film about a Muslim, Mr. Badi (Homayon Ershadi), who drives around the barren hills outside Tehran, flagging down passersby and offering good money for a simple job that he's hesitant to explain. He's planning his suicide and seeks someone to perform something of a symbolic eulogy. Most of his subjects refuse (personal morality aside, suicide is forbidden to Muslims), but he finds an elderly taxidermist (Abdolrahman Bagheri) who agrees only because he needs the money for an ill child. Yet the old man gently pleads with him to choose life, to embrace the joys of earthly existence, to remember the taste of cherries. Though initially greeted with critical acclaim, A Taste of Cherry received poor distribution in the U.S. The meandering, deliberately paced drama is composed of long conversations and long silences, and the camera is locked in the car for entire sequences, staring at the protagonists in still closeups with the dusty landscape rolling past the windows of the Land Rover in the background. Kiarostami's film is not for everyone, but if you can embrace the quiet power and grace of his deceptively simple style, the film becomes a remarkably rich celebration of human dignity and resilience. By the astonishing conclusion we can see past Badi's age-etched face to the soul peering out from behind his sad eyes. --Sean Axmaker |
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Close-Up
Release Date: 2002-03-19
Sales rank: 19141
Studio: Facets Multimedia Release Date: 02/19/2002 Run time: 100 minutes |
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Kandahar
Release Date: 2003-05-13
Sales rank: 50052
The prolific Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Gabbeh) had one of his most visible international successes with this haunting, open-ended drama. Set (and shot) during the Taliban era, it follows an Afghani-Canadian woman as she attempts to enter Afghanistan in search of a despondent sister. Since it is illegal for a woman to travel alone, she must rely on the kindness--or curiosity--of strangers, including a scrappy boy and a mysterious American doctor. The woman playing the lead role had earlier contacted Makhmalbaf about a similar real-life search, which prompted him to write the screenplay. The director doesn't really tell her story so much as he unveils a way of life: in the desert, we meet land-mine victims, Red Cross volunteers caught in a Catch-22 world, and women smothered in head-to-foot burkas. The portrait is one of oppression, but also of people furiously trying to get by. --Robert Horton |
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The Willow Tree
Release Date: 2008-05-20
Sales rank: 51673
Blind since childhood, Youssef has a devoted wife, loving daughter, and successful university career, but his affliction fills him with secret torment. As if in answer to his prayers, a clinic restores his sight - a miracle that is double-edged. Although this new world of sight and color floods him with ecstasy - the breathtaking images seen through his reawakened eyes include a dazzling vista of snow-blanketed hills, a shower of molten gold sparks in a jewelry foundry, an array of lollipop lights behind a rain-speckled car window - it also plunges him into a labyrinth of confusions and temptations. A pretty student begins to eclipse his previously invisible wife; he silently watches a subway pickpocket, who fixes him with a look of withering complicity. Eager to claim the lost life he feels he is owed but unable to take the next step, Youssef is inflamed with possibility and paralyzed with egoism. A resonant metaphor for life s second chances and a powerful parable of sight and insight, The Willow Tree s vivid imagery and emotional immediacy makes this Majid Majidi s most mature and ambitious film to date. Special Features:
- Optional English Subtitles
- Scene Selections |
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The Cow
Release Date: 2004-08-24
Sales rank: 20082
Influenced by Italian Neorealism, THE COW has the beauty and simplicity associated with the great films of that movement. In a small village in Iran, Hassan cherishes his cow more than anything in the world, for both emotional and economical reasons. While he is away, the cow mysteriously dies, and the villagers protectively try to convince Hassan the cow has wandered off. Grief stricken, Hassan begins to believe he is his own beloved bovine. The story is Mehrjui's treatise on emotional attachment told in his characteristic simple and touching manner.
THE COW won great acclaim at the Venice Film Festival after being smuggled out of Iran in 1971, and was twice voted the best Iranian film ever made by a survey of Iranian film critics. |
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