Author: Bijan Tehrani

From the moment Familia begins, one senses right away that Rodrigo García has crafted something intimate, deliberate, and quietly powerful — a film that refuses spectacle and instead trusts in the small fissures of connection, memory, conflict, and love to carry its weight. In a cinematic landscape saturated with bombast, this is a welcome reminder of how much drama, and how much beauty, can unfold in a single afternoon, simply by putting a group of people in a room and letting their pasts and present demands collide. The film’s conceit is deceptively simple: Leo (played with haunting gravity by Daniel…

Rodrigo García’s Four Good Days (2020) is a film that, at first glance, might seem to belong to the familiar cinematic terrain of addiction dramas. Yet García, true to his lifelong sensibility as a storyteller of quiet emotional earthquakes, transforms this apparently simple narrative into an intimate psychological study of love, endurance, and the almost unbearable fragility of hope. The film, co-written by García and Eli Saslow (based on Saslow’s Washington Post article “How’s Amanda? A Story of Truth, Lies and an American Addiction”), stars Mila Kunis as Molly, a woman fighting to escape the destructive gravitational pull of heroin,…

There are films that attempt to recreate the divine through spectacle, and there are others that dare to approach it through silence. Last Days in the Desert, directed by Rodrigo García, belongs to the second kind — a film that listens instead of preaching, that breathes instead of shouting, that dares to imagine the mystery of faith as something painfully human, fragile, and trembling before its own reflection. From its first frame, García makes it clear that we are not entering the territory of biblical grandeur or Hollywood’s well-lit sainthood. Instead, we are being invited to walk into a desert…

Albert Nobbs is not simply a period drama set in the streets and rooms of nineteenth-century Dublin; it is a meditation on survival, disguise, solitude, and the fragile hope that flickers even in the most stifled lives. Rodrigo García directs the film with the same quiet intensity that has defined his career, and in doing so, he transforms what might have remained a small and contained story into a haunting portrait of the human need for recognition. The film does not shout or demand; it whispers, it glances, it hides behind silences, yet by the end it leaves the viewer…

The 14th Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival (EMIFF), taking place from October 21–29, 2025, is widely regarded as the most prestigious boutique film festival in Europe. Set against the stunning Mediterranean backdrop of Palma, EMIFF draws top-tier talent, industry decision makers, and fresh new voices from the indie film scene. EMIFF’s mission is to bridge cultures and showcase diverse films, fostering creative exchange and collaboration between filmmakers from around the world. Each year, the festival presents a vibrant, international program that inspires both creative connection and cinematic innovation, forging its reputation as an essential destination for filmmakers and film-lovers alike.…

Cinema Without Borders Foundation is honored to welcome Hessam Abrishami—the internationally celebrated Iranian-born American artist—to its Advisory Board. Known for his emotionally charged and vibrantly colored contemporary figurative paintings, Abrishami’s art is a celebration of the human spirit, capturing energy, elegance, and dreamlike depth with remarkable intensity. After pursuing higher education at the Accademia di Belle Arti Pietro Vanucci in Perugia, Italy, Abrishami embarked on a prolific career that has spanned decades and continents. His achievements are staggering: more than 180 solo gallery exhibitions, participation in over 65 international exhibitions, and inclusion in eight major museum shows. Beyond the galleries,…

All That’s Left of You, by Cherien Dabis, a Palestinian American actress, director, producer, and screenwriter, is Jordan’s Oscar submission.  All That’s Left of You arrives not only as a cinematic achievement but as a profound act of remembrance, resistance, and human testimony. To watch it is to step into the texture of memory itself, a film that lingers not just in the mind but in the very bloodstream. It is rare to encounter a work that carries such epic historical weight while also remaining tethered to the smallest, most intimate details of life. Yet this is precisely what this…

For me, Claudia Cardinale was always more than a star. She was the girl with a small suitcase, an eternal traveler who never truly returned from her journeys. Every time she appeared on the screen, I felt a new story begin—one that only she could tell with her gaze. Today, the news of her passing struck me like a cold wind on a lover’s heart; it felt as if The Girl with a Suitcase, who had inspired my dreams and my words for so many years, had quietly picked up her suitcase and left without saying goodbye. In Fellini’s 8½,…

I have always loved Hitchcock and regard him not merely as an auteur, but as a creator who gave birth to an entirely new world—a galaxy where countless filmmakers have lived and built their own planets. Among the great Hitchcock scholars worldwide, a few of the Iranian critics such as Parviz Davaei, Kiumars Vejdani, and Bahram Beyzaie hold a very special place in my view. For all Hitchcock enthusiasts, I highly recommend the book Hitchcock in the Frame, the result of a long conversation with Bahram Beyzaie about Hitchcock’s cinematic language. (the book is in Farsi and we will translate…

Rodrigo García’s Mother and Child is one of those rare ensemble dramas that approaches its subject with extraordinary delicacy yet leaves a lasting emotional weight. The film, which García both wrote and directed in 2009, interlaces three stories shaped by adoption, bringing them together into a single portrait of longing, loss, and renewal. It is a quiet work, free of melodrama, that builds its power through honesty and restraint. At the heart of the film is Karen, played with remarkable precision by Annette Bening. As a teenager she gave up her baby for adoption, and decades later she lives a…