Author: Bijan Tehrani

TRANSIT, directed Hannah Espia, Philippine’s Oscar Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Award, explores the intersecting stories of Filipinos in Tel Aviv when the threat of a law deporting the children of migrant workers looms their precarious lives. Janet, a domestic worker on an expired visa, struggles to hide her half-Israeli daughter, Yael—a rebellious teenager caught up in a juvenile romance. Most endangered in the situation is four-year old Joshua, whom Janet and Yael protect because the boy’s father, Moises, works on weekdays as a caregiver in the city of Herzliya. The film also explores the life of a…

CONVERSATIONS ON SERIOUS TOPICS, directed by Giedre Beinoriute is Lithuanian’s Oscar entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Award. This is a film without exterior action, props, landscapes or special effects. Its main characters are children and teenagers with a special ability to describe the surrounding world. Intimate conversations with them reveal the picture of the modern world – at times melancholic, at times comical, at times dramatic. Shot in a minimalist fashion, the film raises questions about loneliness, love, God, the world and human relations. “The world is people.” “Don’t you believe in God? I can teach you how…

EL LIMPIADOR, The Cleaner, written and directed by Adrian Saba is Peru’s Oscar Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Award. The Cleaner is about Eusebio, a quiet man, living his routine and solitary life even as the devastating, mysterious epidemic sweeping Lima keeps him busy from morning ‘til night. A forensic cleaner who sterilizes the apartments of the dead, Eusebio has more work than he can handle as Lima slowly crumbles. Accustomed as he is to working around those who can’t respond to him, Eusebio is understandably taken aback when he finds a young boy hiding deep in a…

BOY EATING THE BIRDS FOOD, written and directed by Ektoras Lygizos, is Greece’s OSCAR Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Award.A 22-year-old boy in Athens has no job, no money, no girlfriend and no food to eat, but he’s got a canary bird and a beautiful singing voice. When he finds himself without a home, he has to seek a shelter for his bird. And when the bird gets trapped inside the shelter, the boy has to find some help. He has to find someone with whom he can confess he has no job, no money, no girlfriend and…

THE DISCIPLE, Finland’s Oscar entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Award, happens An island in the Baltic Sea in the summer of 1939. Thirteen-year-old Karl has come to work as an assistant to Hasselbond, the lighthouse master. Hasselbond at first rejects the boy because of his age, but Karl, who has grown up in an orphanage struggles desperately to stay on, using every opportunity to demonstrate how hard he can work. Finally, Hasselbond accepts him. Karl and Hasselbond’s oppressed son, Gustaf, become friends, but their friendship changes to rivalry and hate when Hasselbond begins to favor Karl over his…

Searching for her own identity as a cosmopolitan (Jew), documentary filmmaker Cintia Chamecki tells the story of her grandparents and their arduous journey from their Eastern European shtetl to South America to their final destination: Curitiba, Brazil. The film recalls how Curitiba’s first immigrants arrived well before World War II and assimilated to Brazilian culture with its mysteries and challenges, while preserving their Jewish heritage. And it portrays how this tightly knit community supported the second wave of arrivals, who had barely escaped the Holocaust, how everyone mourned those loved ones that perished in the concentration camps, how they dealt…

“Bethlehem”, Israel’s Oscar selection for the Best Foreign Language Film Award, tells the story of the complex relationship between Razi, an Israeli Secret Service officer, and his teenage Palestinian informant Sanfur.Sanfur is the younger brother of Ibrahim, a highly wanted Palestinian militant. Razi, determined to capture or assassinate Ibrahim, recruited Sanfur when he was just 15, investing all his energy in the kid and developing a very intimate, almost fatherly relationship with him. Sanfur, who has always lived in his brother’s shadow, thrives on Razi’s attention. Now 17, he struggles to navigate between Razi’s demands and his loyalty to his…

THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN, Belgium’s Official Entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, is a portrait of the great love affair between tattoo artist Elise (Veerle Baetens, The White Queen) and bluegrass musician Didier (Johan Heldenbergh). After bonding over their shared enthusiasm for American music and culture, they dive headfirst into a sweeping romance that plays out on and off stage — but when an unexpected tragedy hits their new family, everything they know and love is tested. Lead actor Johan Heldenbergh co-wrote the hit play that THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN is based on. It was adapted…

Cinema Italian Style 2013 opens November 14th at the Egyptian theatre with the U.S. premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s THE GREAT BEAUTY, Italy’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2013 Academy Awards®. Sorrentino will be joined on the red carpet by Academy Award Winner Bernardo Bertolucci. Both directors will receive the Cinema Italian Style Award prior to the film screening. The opening night presentation is in collaboration with AFI FEST which will be presenting THE GREAT BEAUTY in its World Cinema program. Here is an interview with Alberto Di Mauro, director of the Italian Cultural Institute, Los Angeles about…

A Cinema of Discontent: Film Censorship in Iran, the latest film from Jamsheed Akrami, an Iranian/American filmmaker, deals with problems of filmmaking and censorship in Iran. Last week, we had the opportunity of speaking to Jamsheed Akrami about his film and estate of the filmmaking in Iran. Dr. Jamsheed Akrami is a former editor of the Iranian film magazines Film and Art and Film Quarterly. He has published extensively on Iranian cinema, presented dozens of lectures, curated several film series, and produced a number of films and videos, including a trilogy of feature-length documentaries on Iranian cinema: The Lost Cinema,…