19. - 21. 1. 2017
http://iranci.cz/en/
Echoes of 6th Iranian Film Festival will take place between 19th – 21st January 2017 in cinema Lumiére in Bratislava. The program features ten notable films. A galvanizing, suspenseful and clear-eyed naturalistic piece The Salesman which received the best screenplay and the best actor award in Cannes IFF 2016. The director Asghar Farhadi is the most acclaimed living director of the Iranian cinema. Following film Nahid is a poignant and absorbing story of a divorced woman who tries hard to stand on her feet and turn over a new leaf. Poetic essay Wedding: A Film by Mohammadreza Farzad will be screened in the hall K4. The director together with his ex-wife, a film editor, tries to find the answer by thoroughly examining footage of various weddings, ranging from commercials to his own wedding video.
The Friday program will start with exceptional feature debut Bodkin Ras by Kaweh Modiri. Bewildering melange of noir, mockumentary and outright fantasy, A Dragon Arrives! by Mani Haghighi will follow. The film Starless Dreams (director Mehrdad Oskouei) will be screened in the adjacent hall. Set almost entirely in one dorm room of a female juvenile prison, this breathtakingly intimate portrait traces the traumatic experiences that led the young prisoners there.
The Saturday program will feature Immortal by Hadi Mohaghegh which portrays the unceasing struggle of an aging man and his grandson with the fatal meaning of loss. Following film I by Soheil Beiraghi which follows the unorthodox life of a multi-layered music teacher whose hands are long dirty in many wrongdoings. Addicted to the evil she conducts, she spirals down what seems to be a schizophrenic series of encounters and events that slowly lead her to an inescapable edge. A breathtaking and triumphant debut Under the Shadow by Babak Anvari will close the program in the main hall. Shorter pieces Rebel Beats and Mr. Jobless will be screened in the hall K4.
The Salesman is the story of a couple whose relationship begins to turn sour during their performance of Arthur Millerʼs Death of a Salesman. – Forced to leave their collapsing house, Ranaa and Emad, an Iranian couple who happen to be performers rehearsing for Arthur Millerʼs play rent a new apartment from one of their fellow performers. Unaware of the fact that the previous tenant had been a woman of ill repute having many clients, they settle down. By a nasty turn of events one of the clients pays a visit to the apartment one night while Ranaa is alone at home taking a bath and the aftermath turns the peaceful life of the couple upside down. – The film won the Best Screenplay and the Best Actor (Shahab Hosseini) awards at the Cannes film festival in 2016. Show more
What exactly determines the success or failure of one’s marriage? Can we detect some signs of the future events on the actual wedding day? In an almost quixotic poetic essay, the director together with his ex-wife, a film editor, tries to find the answer by thoroughly examining footage of various weddings, ranging from commercials to his own wedding video. Show more
A poignant and absorbing story of a divorced woman who tries hard to stand on her feet and turn over a new leaf, Nahid follows the never ending struggles of a social outcast with few rights and even fewer options. As she stands at a life-changing crossroad of her life with a new man, her escalating fights with her gambling-addicted self-destructive former husband over the custody of their son reach a breaking point. Show more
An exceptional feature debut that passes the boundaries between fiction and reality in an startling approach, Bodkin Ras follows a mysterious Middle-Eastern looking stranger with a dark past who walks into a small village looking for a fresh start and a fair chance at a remote corner of Europe. But as the citizens of the small town finally begin to like him, he finds his tragic past catching up with him all over again. Show more
Set almost entirely in one dorm room of a female juvenile prison, this breathtakingly intimate portrait traces the traumatic experiences that led the young prisoners there. While sadness prevails, there are moments of true companionship and understanding that many of them have not experienced outside the four walls even with their families. Empathic and sensitive direction uncovers their greatest secrets without vulgarity. Show more
A bewildering melange of noir, mockumentary and outright fantasy, A Dragon Arrives! is set on a surreal-looking desert where a young detective and his singular team investigate the apparent suicide of a political prisoner in search of an incredible truth that lies in a haunted cemetery nearby. But as thinner layers of the story begin to unfold, they find themselves going through a mysterious journey and towards a highly cryptic destiny. Show more
Unfolding its compelling story with profound and arresting images, Immortal portrays the unceasing struggle of an aging man and his grandson with the fatal meaning of loss. Sparked by a heartbreaking and unseen backstory, the two fight their fate, their arid and isolated world and each other; one in order to seize life and the other, to put an abrupt end to it. Show more
With Leila Hatami in an astounding and non identical main role as Azar, I follows the unorthodox life of a multi-layered music teacher whose hands are long dirty in many wrongdoings. Addicted to the evil she conducts, she spirals down what seems to be a schizophrenic series of encounters and events that slowly lead her to an inescapable edge; all the while, not realizing that she is being watched by a pair of mean and envious eyes. Show more
With the downturn of the Iranian economy in 2012, unemployment is soaring. But when Ali refuses to stay idle and decides to make a film about his unemployment, he achieves perhaps the most entertaining film on the topic to date. Art, war, relationships, taxi rides, the end of the world. Using a number of different filmmaking styles, this merry-go-round essay has it all. SHORT MOVIE: Rebel beats Rebel Beats; Omid Marzban, 26´, OV (farsi) + ST (cz) + ES As military helicopters continue to hover over Kabul, the music couple known as 143Band are fighting a different war on the ground, with their rap songs in support of Afghan women and their rights. Despite facing constant harassment and violence on the streets and online, defeat is a word that cannot be found either in their vocabulary or the lyrics of their songs. Show more
A breathtaking and triumphant debut feature, Under the Shadow is a terrifying allegory of the war-torn Tehran in the 80s where a mother and daughter struggle to cope with the terrors of the approaching missiles. One by one all the neighbours leave to escape until the two are the only ones left in the building as a mysterious evil begins to haunt their home. Show more
