Author: Bijan Tehrani

Anne Sewitsky’s Happy, Happy is Norway’s Selection for the 2012 Best Foreign Movie Oscar.In Happy, Happy, family is the most important thing in the world to Kaja. She is an eternal optimist in spite of living with a man who would rather go hunting with the boys, and who refuses to have sex with her because she “isn’t particularly attractive” anymore. Whatever—that’s life! But when “the perfect couple” moves in next door, Kaja struggles to keep her emotions in check. Not only do these successful, beautiful, exciting people sing in a choir; they have also adopted a child—from Ethiopia! These…

Scandinavian Film Festival, Los Angeles opens on January 7, 2012. In order to learn more about 2012 festival, we had a conversation with SFFLA Founder/Director James Koenig.*Bijan Tehrani: There are festivals in LA, dealing with filmmaking in one particular country, but Scandinavian Film Festival L.A. (SFFLA) covers all Scandinavian countries, how challenging this has been?James Koenig: Well, let’s put it this way— It’s a good natured exercise in diplomacy. I can say the names of all five Scandinavian countries very quickly in alphabetical order forwards and backwards! We are always very careful to represent each country fairly. And of course…

The Palm Springs International Film Festival will open on January 5th and continue through January 16th. PSIFF has consistently proven to be a fantastic platform for international film exhibition, as well as an outstanding event for international film fans within the U.S. and abroad. Last week, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Darryl Macdonald, Director of the festival, and discussing the ins-and-outs of the 2012 PSIFF.Bijan Tehrani: In Palm Springs International 2011 international cinema had a very strong presence, how is it in 2012 festival?Darryl Macdonald: The vast majority of our programming has always been devoted to a…

Set in a remote village where the church and the mosque stand side by side, Where Do We Go Now? follows the antics of the town’s women to keep their blowhard men from starting a religious war. Women heartsick over sons, husbands and fathers lost to previous flare-ups unite to distract their men with clever ruses, from faking a miracle to hiring a troop of Ukrainian strippers. Nadine Labaki, writer and director of the Where Do We Go Now?, Lebanon’s Oscar 2012 selection, was born in 1974 in Lebanon. She received a degree in film studies at Beirut’s Saint-Joseph University…

In Darkness is based on a true story. Leopold Socha, a sewer worker and petty thief in Lvov, a Nazi occupied city in Poland, one day encounters a group of Jews trying to escape the liquidation of the ghetto. He hides them for money in the labyrinth of the town’s sewers beneath the bustling activity of the city above. What starts out as a straightforward and cynical business arrangement turns into something much unexpected, the unlikely alliance between Socha and the Jews as the enterprise seeps deeper into Socha’s conscience. The film is also an extraordinary story of survival as…

Violeta Parra Went to Heaven is about the life of Violeta Para the Chilean singer, author, collector, poet, painter, sculptor, embroiderer, and ceramist. She was a multifaceted artist, a popular culture icon, a treasurer of deepest Chilean traditions, and a woman of intense contradictions, but unique genius. With more than 3,000 songs and other inspiring works, Violeta Parra won the appreciation of national art and opened the gates for the new Chilean song. She rescued the forgotten traditional culture, traveled through Chile from north to south to meet its voice, uplift it, and save it from stereotypes; then she reinvented…

Set against the backdrop of the July 7th 2005 terrorist attacks, LONDON RIVER follows Elisabeth (BAFTA winner, Academy Award nominee Brenda Blethyn) from a small farming community in Guernsey as she travels to London in the immediate aftermath of the bombings after failing to hear from her daughter. Elizabeth is disturbed by the confusion of the metropolis and above all, by the predominantly Muslim neighborhood where her daughter lived. Her fear and prejudice escalate when she discovers that her daughter was converting to Islam and as she keeps crossing paths with Ousmane (Berlin’s Silver Bear winner, Sotigui Kouyaté), a West…

The Film That Changed My Life: 30 Directors on Their Epiphanies in the Dark is a book about epiphany moments. For filmmakers, it captures that first encounter with the movie that inspired them to direct movies. In The Film That Changed My Life, I talk with 30 directors about how this film influenced their own work and how it made them think differently about movies. Film critic Leonard Maltin said, “You’ll have a hard time putting this book down.” Chicago Tribune film critic and former At the Movies co-host Michael Phillips has called the book, “A great and provocative read…it’s…

ELMA, European Languages and Movies in America, was founded by Pascal Ladreyt more than five years ago. For the fifth anniversary of Elma I had a chance to speak to Pascal and learn more about what ELMA does. But as a prologue to our conversation there would be nothing better than asking two of the festival directors working with ELMA to talk about their experience: “ELMA’s unique focus on the promotion of European cinema, European culture and European artists in an increasingly cluttered Los Angeles festival milieu is a great boost to all of us”, says Vera Mijojlic, founder and…

As a fan of international cinema, I am always on the lookout for new ways to see movies from around the globe. Having access to innovative resources such as Web sites and services that stream foreign films is essential to film buffs like me. Most people are familiar with Netflix— the online subscription service that streams movies and TV shows over the Internet. Even with the demand for and popularity of Netflix, its vast archives, nevertheless, are still missing some of the greats in film history. Last month I used Hulu.com for the first time, and on this site I…