Author: Bijan Tehrani

Halima’s Path, Croatia’s Oscar Entry, directed by Arsen Anton Ostojic tells the tragic but inspiring story of a grieving, but strong-willed Muslim woman Halima who tries, without success, to find the remains of her son who was killed in the Bosnian War and buried in one of the many mass graves. She realizes that she must track down her estranged niece, who we find carries a mysterious connection to him. After finding her, Halima discovers a horrifying fact from her worst nightmares. With this discovery, the spiral of tragic events from the past would continue in the present, disrupting once…

15 Years + 1 Day, directed by Gracia Querejeta is Spain’s Oscar Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Award. Margo (Maribel Verdú, Belle Époque, Y tu mamá también) is struggling to deal with her son, Jon (Arón Piper) a rebellious and freespirited teenager who runs with a bad crowd. After Jon is expelled from school, Margo sends him to live with his grandfather Max (Tito Valverde, El comisario, Todos los hombre sois iguales), a retired military officer who lives in a small coastal town and believes he can fix his grandson with his own style of discipline. This new…

MAN OF HOPE is Poland’s Oscar Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Award directed by legendary Andrzej Wajda . The New Europe has its beginnings in Gdansk! “Wałęsa. Man of Hope” is a story of a contemporary hero – Lech Wałęsa (Robert Więckiewicz). The movie begins with Oriana Fallaci (Maria Rosaria Omaggio) appearing at the Wałęsas’ flat in an apartment block to interview the future Nobel Prize winner. The emotion-packed conversation with one of the world most famous journalists constitutes a fabric of the movie narrative. Fallaci poses questions no one else ever wanted or dared to ask the…

The Butterfly’s Dream directed and written by Yilmaz Erdoðan is Turkey’s OSCAR entry for the Best Foreign Language Award Film. The Butterfly’s Dream centers on two young poets in the 1940s of Turkey who make a bet on a pretty girl. Whoever’s poem the girl likes will win, and the other will step aside. The poets however have to deal with other problems like disease, poverty, compulsory work in the mines and the Second World War in the meantime. As the story unravels, the poets travel through cities and events in search of happiness. Is it the optimist who’s the…

CHILD’S POSE, directed by Călin Peter Netzer is Romania’s Oscar Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Award.A tangled drama of ethics, corrupt authority and misplaced maternal love, CHILD’S POSE stars one of the stalwarts of Romanian cinema, Luminita Gheorghiu (THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU, 4 MONTHS 3 WEEKS 2 DAYS, BEYOND THE HILLS, 12:08 BUCHAREST) as a middle-aged domineering mother and member of Romania’s ruling class, who uses all of her connections to keep her estranged adult son out of jail when he faces manslaughter charges for reckless driving. Bijan Tehrani: How did you come up with the idea…

THE HUNT directed and co-written by Thomas Vinterberg and Denmark’s Oscar Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Award, is a disturbing depiction of how a lie becomes the truth when gossip, doubt and malice are allowed to flourish and ignite a witch-hunt that soon threatens to destroy an innocent man’s life. Mads Mikkelsen won the Best Actor Award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival for his penetrating portrayal of Lucas, a former school teacher who has been forced to start over having overcome a tough divorce and the loss of his job. Just as things are starting to go…

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…