Author: Farzaneh Matin

Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy is a series that exposes the hidden darkness within a seemingly ordinary human being—the story of a man with two faces. One line of dialogue in the final episode alone offers a revealing clue to the making of a monster: “Why do fathers think beating their children is the way to discipline them?” This single question opens a path toward understanding how an individual can gradually transform into something monstrous. One of America’s most infamous serial killers was John Wayne Gacy, who became known as the “Killer Clown” because of his deceptively respectable appearance…

Father, directed by Tereza Nvotová, is a devastating and deeply unsettling film. Because of the extraordinary skill with which it delivers its emotional shock, watching it is anything but easy. It is one of the bleakest yet most profoundly honest European dramas of recent years—a film that does not invite its audience to judge but instead leaves them trapped in a moral and human dilemma for which there are no simple answers. The story follows Michal Rehák, a forty-year-old engineer and devoted father whose demanding job consumes much of his life. On a warm summer morning, rushing to work, he…

About forty years ago—perhaps fewer—hardly anyone could have imagined that the final film of Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Italian poet, writer, and director, would in some way foreshadow the Epstein case. By making Salò, or the The 120 Days of Sodom, set in the city of Sodom (sin), he showed that within a closed system, power can do whatever it desires. Half a century has passed since the first and last public screening of The 120 Days of Sodom—a film banned in more than fifty countries around the world not only because of its explicit and disturbing scenes, but also…

Taylor Sheridan can rightly be regarded as a genius of the Western and neo-Western television genre. With the critically acclaimed five-season series Yellowstone, he demonstrated that, amid Hollywood’s endless stream of spy thrillers, romantic dramas, crime stories, and mysteries, the Western still has a great deal to say. The overwhelming success of Yellowstone led Sheridan to expand its universe with two equally ambitious spin-offs, 1883 and 1923, both produced by Paramount. This year, Sheridan returned with The Madison, a six-episode neo-Western drama that premiered on Paramount+ in March. Originally developed under the working title 2024, the series was renamed at…

Hall 4 is one of the independent, under-the-radar, yet thought-provoking works by young filmmaker Hossein Torkjoush. Screened at the Fajr Film Festival, the film received a positive response from critics. Rather than relying on an event-driven narrative, it focuses on atmosphere, psychological suspense, and the audience’s gradual confrontation with an enclosed and increasingly tense situation. According to the director himself, Hall 4 represents a modern interpretation of Masoud Kimiai’s cinematic style. At the same time, it should not be overlooked that the film firmly belongs to the tradition of social realist street cinema. For many viewers, the term “street genre”…

Diabolical: The Epstein Files is the latest documentary to examine one of the most controversial criminal cases of modern times. Released in February 2026, the 90-minute film revisits a case that has remained at the center of media attention, public debate, and political and social analysis for years. For many people, Jeffrey Epstein is not merely the name of an American financier; he has become synonymous with a complex web of power, wealth, influence, scandal, and unanswered questions. It is therefore no surprise that every new documentary about the case immediately attracts widespread attention and reignites debate about its hidden…

Fashion, Fame, and the Cost of Identity: How Alice Winocour’s Couture Falls Short of the Great Fashion Films Alice Winocour’s Couture (2025), starring Angelina Jolie, sets out to combine intimate personal drama with the seductive world of haute couture. It is an ambitious premise that ultimately fails to fulfill its considerable potential. Rather than offering a compelling exploration of fashion as a cultural force or a penetrating character study, the film remains caught between the two, never fully committing to either. What remains is a visually elegant but emotionally distant work whose greatest—and almost only—lasting achievement is Angelina Jolie’s remarkably…

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…