Author: Farzaneh Matin

In 2021, as the Taliban gradually seized Afghan cities one after another, they ultimately took control of Kabul and, after twenty-one years, regained power in the country. While Afghanistan’s political and social order was collapsing, some Afghans resisted selflessly and, amid the widespread chaos and turmoil, refused to abandon their homeland until the very last moments. Nevertheless, the people of Afghanistan—especially women—knew all too well what bitter fate awaited them. Four years after the fall of Afghanistan, France produced a miniseries titled Kabul. In this review, I examine how the series represents the crisis. Classified as a political drama, the…

Young Mothers, directed by the celebrated French filmmakers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, is one of the most notable works of contemporary social cinema. The film premiered this year at the Cannes Film Festival, where it not only received strong critical acclaim but also won the Best Screenplay Award. Shot in an almost documentary-like manner, Young Mothers directly addresses the problems and challenges faced by teenage mothers in modern societies. This time, the Dardenne brothers focus intensely on realism and the depiction of everyday life. They draw the audience into the tense and complex world of four young mothers, portraying…

At first glance, it may seem unlikely that the publication of a novel in the early nineteenth century could play a significant role in shaping ideas about artificial intelligence or technologies such as ChatGPT. Yet Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley’s enduring masterpiece, is not merely a literary work but a foundational text in the history of human thought about artificial intelligence. To understand this—and the profound influence the novel has had on world cinema and television—we must travel back from the twenty-first century to the summer of 1816, to a villa by Lake Geneva. It was there that…