Author: Bijan Tehrani

Burbank, California – December 19th 2018 – TodayCinema Without Borders announced The ICEBOX a HBO movie directed by Daniel Sawka as winner of its 2018 GoE Bridging The Borders Award for its outstanding artistic values to address an important social justice issue. Susan Morgan Cooper, a Cinema Without Borders artistic adviser and Jury member says: “We are delighted to present our Cinema without Borders Award, sponsored by Go Energistics to the heartbreaking and very timely HBO narrative film, ICEBOX. The film chronicles 12-year-old Oscar’s journey to the U.S.seeking asylum. After fleeing his native Honduras and traveling on foot all through Mexico,…

The Marriage, directed by Blerta Zeqiri, is Kosovo’s Oscar entry. In The Marriage Their, Anita and Bekim, wedding in only two weeks, are adding the final touches to their big day. Despite expecting news of Anita’s parents, declared missing since the 1999 Kosovo War, and with Bekim’s controlling family in turn, the couple seem to manage somehow with the preparations. But when Bekim’s secret gay ex-lover, Nol, returns from abroad unexpectedly, the situation becomes complicated, especially when Bekim realizes that Nol is still in love with him. Inevitably, the wedding banquet becomes loaded with tension when the unusual love triangle starts…

“I do not care if we go down in history as barbarians.” These words, spoken in the Council of Ministers of the summer of 1941, started the ethnic cleansing on the Eastern Front and now its title of a new film by Radu Jude, the Romanian filmmaker. The amazing film with its rich satire and fresh look, attempts to comment on the above statement. “I do not care if we go down in history as barbarians.” Is Romania’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Award and we had a brief interview with Radu Jude. Radu does not believe that…

In A MOMENT IN THE REEDS, having moved to Paris for university, Leevi returns to his native Finland for the summer to help his estranged father renovate the family lake house so it can be sold. Tareq, a recent asylum seeker from Syria, has been hired to help with the work, and when Leevi’s father must return to town on business, the two young men fall in love and spend a few days discovering one another during the Finnish midsummer. The following is Cinema Without Borders interview with Mikko Makela, director of A MOMENT IN THE REEDS. Mikko Makela is…

Never Look Away, a Golden Globe nominee for the Best Morion Picture – Foreign Language and Germany’s  Best Foreign Language Oscar entry is directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. Never Look Away is inspired by real events and spanning three eras of German history, NEVER LOOK AWAY tells the story of a young art student, Kurt (Tom Schilling) who falls in love with fellow student, Ellie (Paula Beer). Ellie’s father, Professor Seeband (Sebastian Koch), a famous doctor, is dismayed at his daughter’s choice of boyfriend, and vows to destroy the relationship. What neither of them knows is that their lives are already…

THE GOALKEEPER, Bolivian Oscar Entry is a thought-provoking thriller about a former iconic goalkeeper, Jorge “Muralla” Rivera, whose fame has run out and he is now scraping out a living as an alcoholic bus driver.His son is desperately sick and he does the unthinkable to save his child but to no avail.Racked with guilt and haunted by ghosts, Jorge seeks redemption to rescue the young girl he sold, even if it means his own downfall.THE GOALKEEPER is a powerful story that addresses the sad and frightening facts that approximately eight children a day disappear from the streets of La Paz…

The Rock (Bard) a short documentary film from Iran directed by Hamid Jafari is up for a chance for an Oscar nomination. The Rock happens in the South of Iran, where a woman goes to the mountain every day with her sledgehammer and crowbar, breaks rocks, and sells them to support her family. The Rock is a beautifully made film about survival and the powerful image it portrays from the main character of the film will remain with you for a very long time. Being an independent film and with the effects of US sanctions against Iran, The Rock did not…

To learn more about the process of selecting the nominees for the Best Foreign Language Film Award, we had an interview with Larry Karaszewski—Governor for the Writers branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences—and Diane Weyermann, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a member of the European Film Academy Larry Karaszewski, with his writing/directing/producing partner Scott Alexander, are best known for writing unusual true stories. They created the hit television miniseries “The People v O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” for which they won the Golden Globe, the Emmy, the PGA and…

Carlos Amador is CIPC’s Organizing Director, based in Los Angeles. He brings a wide-range of organizing and campaign skills from his years as a national immigrant youth leader. He was previously the Project Manager of the Dream Resource Center at the UCLA Labor Center, where he worked on issues impacting immigrant youth nationally. He is a former Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors for the United We Dream Network, and a founding Steering Committee member of the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance. Carlos was also a key member of the successful national campaign that won the Deferred Action for Childhood…

“No Date, No Signature”, directed by Vahid Jalilvand is Iranian entry for Best Foreign language Film Award. “No Date, No Signature” has been quite successful in film festival circuits by winning numerous awards. Driving home at night forensic doctor Kaveh Nariman accidentally knocks a family off their motorcycle. The father, Musa, insists on taking his eight-year-old son who has a slight pain in the back of his neck to a clinic himself but does not follow up. Two days later, the child is dead. Autopsy results show he died of botulism from tainted chicken that his father had bought on the cheap…