THE IRAN JOB follows American basketball player Kevin Sheppard as he accepts a job to play in one of the world’s most feared countries: Iran.With tensions running high between Iran and the West, Kevin tries to separate sports from politics only to find that politics is impossible to escape in Iran.Along the way he forms an unlikely alliance with three outspoken Iranian women. Thanks to these women, his apartment turns into an oasis of free speech, where they discuss everything from politics to religion to gender roles.Kevin’s season in Iran culminates in something much bigger than basketball: the uprising and…
Author: Bijan Tehrani
Bijan Tehrani
Bijan (Hassan) Tehrani Founder and Editor in Chief of Cinema Without Borders, is a film director, writer, and a film critic, his first article appeared in a weekly film publication in Iran 45 years ago. Bijan founded Cinema Without Borders, an online publication dedicated to promotion of international cinema in the US and around the globe, eighteen years ago and still works as its editor in chief. Bijan is has also been a columnist and film critic for the Iranian monthly film related medias for 45 years and during the past 5 years he has been a permanent columnist and film reviewer for Film Emrooz (Film Today), a popular Iranian monthly print film magazine. Bijan has won several awards in international film festivals and book fairs for his short films and children's books as well as for his services to the international cinema. Bijan is a member of Iranian Film Writers Critics Society and International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI). He is also an 82nd Golden Globe Awards voter.
5 Broken Cameras, a film directed by Palestinian filmmaker Emad Burnat and Israeli activist Guy Davidi, has been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. An extraordinary work of both cinematic and political activism, 5 Broken Cameras is a deeply personal, first-hand account of non-violent resistance in Bil’in, a West Bank village threatened by encroaching Israeli settlements. Shot almost entirely by Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat, who bought his first camera in 2005 to record the birth of his youngest son, the film was assembled by Burnat and Israeli co-director Guy Davidi. Structured around the violent destruction of each one of…
In Curfew, a film by Shawn Christensen, nominated for the Academy Awards Best Live Action Short Film, at the lowest point of his life, Richie gets a call from his estranged sister, asking him to look after his nine-year old niece, Sophia, for the evening.SHAWN CHRISTENSEN graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Illustration and Graphic Design. After graduating, he formed indie rock band Stellastarr* and, while on tour, wrote and sold many screenplays, including Sidney Hall (Scott Free Productions) and Karma Coalition (Warner Bros.). His short film Brink, was an Official Selection of the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival…
Tom Van Avermaet’s Death of a Shadow, starring Rust and Bone’s male lead Matthias Schoenaerts, has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.Following his critically acclaimed performances in Michaël R. Roskam’s Oscar-nominated Bullhead and Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone, Death of a Shadow sees Matthias Schoenaerts starring as Nathan Rijckx, a deceased World War I soldier, who is stuck in limbo between life and death. To earn a second chance at life and love, he has to capture the shadows of 10,000 dying men and women. But with just two shadows left to collect, he…
KON-TIKI, nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar happens half a century ago, when a young Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl became one of history’s most famous men with the Kon-Tiki voyage, an astonishing journey of 4,300 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean on a balsawood raft. But this is not the whole story.A handsome and charismatic figure, Thor developed a theory that Polynesia had been settled by peoples travelling east from South America, not west from Asia as previously thought. No-one in the scientific community took him seriously, to say nothing of having it published. After an American professor…
HOW TO SURVIVE A PLAGUE, nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar is a film by first-time director and award-winning journalist David France. (Who has been covering the AIDS crisis for 30 years, first for the gay press and then for the New York Times and Newsweek, among others) David culls from a huge amount of archival footage—most of it shot by the protestors themselves (31 videographers are credited)—to create not just an historical document, but an intimate and visceral recreation of the period through the very personal stories of some of ACT UP’s leading participants. A handbook for all…
NO, nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, happens in 1988, when Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, due to international pressure, was forced to call a plebiscite on his presidency. The country had to vote YES or NO to Pinochet extending his rule for another eight years. Opposition leaders for the NO persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal), to spearhead their campaign. Against all odds, with scant resources and under scrutiny by the despot’s minions, Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and set Chile free.Pablo Larrain was born…
The story of Lore starts in 1945. Left to fend for herself when her SS officer father and mother, a staunch Nazi believer, are interred by the victorious Allies at the end of World War II, Lore, a fourteen-year-old German girl (striking newcomer Saskia Rosendahl), must lead her four siblings on a harrowing journey across a devastated country. When she meets the charismatic and mysterious young refugee Thomas, (Kai Malina, The White Ribbon,) Lore soon finds her world shattered by feelings of hatred and desire as she must put her trust in the very person she was always taught to…
In War Witch, nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, Komona (Rachel Mwanza) is only 12 years old when she is kidnapped by rebel soldiers and enslaved to a life of guerrilla warfare in the African jungle. Forced to commit unspeakable acts of brutality, she finds hope for survival in protective, ghost-like visions (inspiring a rebel chief to anoint her “War Witch”), and in a tender relationship with a fellow soldier named Magician (Serge Kanyinda). Together, they manage to escape the rebels’ clutches, and a normal life finally seems within reach. But after their freedom proves short-lived, Komona realizes…
A ROYAL AFFAIR, a 2013 nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, is the true story of an ordinary man who wins the queen’s heart and starts a revolution. Centering on the intriguing love triangle between the ever more insane Danish King Christian VII (Mikkel Boe Følsgaard), the royal physician who is a man of enlightenment and idealism Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen) and the young but strong Queen Caroline Mathilda (Alicia Vikander), A ROYAL AFFAIR is the gripping tale of brave idealists who risk everything in their pursuit of freedom for their people… Above all it is the story of…