Author: Bijan Tehrani

The Shore nominated for the Best Live Action Short film Oscar, is the uplifting story of two boyhood best friends—Joe (Ciarán Hinds) and Paddy (Conleth Hill)—divided for 25 years by the tumult of “The Troubles”. When Joe returns home to Northern Ireland, his daughter Patricia brings the two men together for a reunion, with unexpected results. What happened all those years ago? Can old wounds be healed? The answer is both hilarious and moving. The Shore is about one of the small personal reconciliations that coincide with a national reconciliation.The Shore is written and directed by Belfast native and double…

One of the five Oscar nominees for the Best Animated Short film t is Sunday from Canada, directed by Patrick Doyon. Sunday is a National Film Board of Canada production. Every Sunday, it’s the same old routine! The train clatters through the village and almost shakes the pictures off the wall. In the church, Dad dreams about his toolbox. And of course later Grandma will get a visit and the animals will meet their fate. Here is our short interview with Patrick Doyon about Sunday.Bijan Tehrani: How did you come up with the idea of Sunday? Patrick Doyon: I took…

MORGEN is the story of NELU, a man in his forties who works as a security guard in the local supermarket in Salonta, a small town on the Romanian-Hungarian border, where many illegal emigrants try to cross first to Hungary and then to Western Europe. One morning, NELU will “fish” something different out of the river: a Turkish man trying to cross the border. Not able to communicate verbally, the two men will somehow understand each other. NELU takes the stranger to the farmhouse, gives him some dry clothes, food and shelter, but doesn’t really know how to help him. …

Set in contemporary Iran, A Separation is a compelling drama about the dissolution of a marriage. Simin wants to leave Iran with her husband Nader and daughter Termeh. Simin sues for divorce when Nader refuses to leave behind his Alzheimer-suffering father. Her request having failed, Simin returns to her parents’ home, but Termeh decides to stay with Nader. When Nader hires a young woman to assist with his father in his wife’s absence, he hopes that his life will return to a normal state. However, when he discovers that the new maid has been lying to him, he realizes that…

The Girls InThe Band tells the poignant, untold stories of female jazz and big band instrumentalists and their fascinating, groundbreaking journeys from the late 20’s to the present day. These incredibly talented women endured sexism, racism and diminished opportunities for decades, yet continue today to persevere, inspire and elevate their talents in a field that seldom welcomed them. Judy Chaikin director of The Girls InThe Band is a graduate of AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women and is best known for writing, producing and directing the Emmy nominated PBS documentary, LEGACY OF THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST. In 2004 she received her second…

In The British Guide To Showing Off, Loved the world over by celebrities and misfits alike, British artist and living legend Andrew Logan, takes us under his glittering wing and inside his outrageous, anarchic and spectacular costume pageant, the Alternative Miss World Show. Logan describes it as a fabulous living sculpture that spans both his own life and 40 years of underground arts & culture. Artist David Hockney judged the first one, musician David Bowie couldn’t get into the second, film director Derek Jarman won the third and fashionista Zandra Rhoodes designs Logan’s host/hostess costume. Raucous, liberating and sexually charged,…

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…