Berlin film festival has started screening of Iranian films online for 10 days from June 12th to June 21st 2020. Access to the films are free just click or touch here.
The film series consists of two sections: “Displaced Realities” is a programme of fictional and documentary feature-length films and “Fight or Flight” presents a series of short films. These programmes will be complemented by talks with filmmakers and experts in Iranian cinema: Bahram Beyzai (film & theater director & professor at Stanford University, USA), Rakhshan Banietemad (film director and screenwriter, Tehran), Mohammadreza Farzad (film director, Tehran), Daniel Kötter (film and theatre director, Berlin ), as well as Afsun Moshiry (curator, Berlin/Tehran) in conversation with Vivien Buchhorn (curator and scholar) and Reza Haeri (film director, Tehran) about the legendary Iranian film director Sohrab Shahid Saless.
Curated by Afsun Moshiry and Berliner Festspiele
Yek ettefāq-e sāde (A Simple Event)
Iran 1973
78 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Written and directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless
Camera: Naghi Massumi
Cast: Ane Mohamad Tarikhi, Habibollah Safarian, Hedayatollah Nawid
Available 12 June, 14:00 – 21 June, 13:59
The everyday life of a ten-year-old boy in a harbour town on the Caspian Sea: His mother is ill, his father makes a living on the black market for fish and drinks. The boy goes to school, but he is not a good student. His mother dies and their attempt to buy a suit for the boy fails.
Bashu, gharibeye koochak (Bashu, the Little Stranger)
Iran 1989
120 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Written and directed by Bahram Beyzai
Camera: Firouz Malekzadeh
Cast: Susan Taslimi, Parviz Pourhosseini, Adnan Afravian, Bashu, Akbar Doodkar, Farokhlagha Hushmand
This film is an important part of the film series, but unfortunately cannot be shown online due to licensing reasons.
Ten-year old Bashu loses his family and his home in an air raid during the war between Iran and Iraq. He manages to take refuge on the loading space of a truck and is taken from southern Iran all the way to the north of the country. He ends up in a village, where a mother of two children takes him in and cares for him. But the other villagers are not happy about this newcomer who doesn’t speak their language and whose skin is darker than theirs. And the husband of Bashu’s saviour also wants to get rid of him as fast as he can. This touching drama was originally funded by the Iranian regime, but later it was banned because of its critical stance towards war and intolerance.
Banoo-Ye Ordibehesht (The May Lady)
Iran 1998
88 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Written and directed by Rakhshan Banietemad
Camera: Hossein Jafarian
Cast: Golab Adineh, Minoo Farshchi, Mani Kasraian, Baran Kosari, Atefeh Razavi
Available 12 June, 14:00 – 21 June, 13:59
“The May Lady” portrays the struggles of a 42-year-old divorcee who is caught between motherhood and womanhood in a society where moral values are constantly changing. Forugh Kia is a documentary filmmaker and a well-educated middle-class woman who has reached a dilemma in both her personal and professional life. She has set aside her own projects in order to make a TV-documentary about the Iranian representation of motherhood and women’s role in society. Meanwhile, she tries to seek balance between her son’s possessive tendencies and personal challenges in her life.
Roozi ke zan shodam (The Day I Became A Woman)
Iran 2000
78 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Directed by Marziyeh Meshkini
Written by Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Camera: Mohammad Ahmadi
Cast: Fatemeh Cheragh Akhar, Shabnam Toloui, Azizeh Sedighi
Available 12 June, 14:00 – 21 June, 13:59
Due to license rights this film will be only available for users from Germany.
The film depicts the position of women for whom their gender poses a social problem. The film focuses on the lives of women who are imprisoned in the house, not because they are hated but because they are loved – women who have to forego emotional attachments in order to win individual independence and active social positions.
Hashti Tehran
Iran 2016
59 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Written and directed by Daniel Kötter
Camera: Daniel Kötter
Cast: Sara Reyhani, Ramash Imanifard, Alireza Labeshka, Amoo Abbas
Available 12 June, 14:00 – 21 June, 13:59
The film ”Hashti Tehran” portrays the peripheral spaces between urbanity and suburbia just outside the city of Tehran. Daniel Kötter opens up four different spaces of transition on the outskirts and shows parts of the Iran that rarely get to be seen. The slow paced pans of the camera across the buildings and landscapes are accentuated by conversations between real estate agents and clients, or people living in the area who talk about expulsion and migration. ”Hashti Tehran” tells the story of how social spaces are not created due to their centricity, but through the use and occupation by people.
Shouting at the Wind
Iran 2018
62 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Written and directed by Ata Mehrad, Siavash Jamali
Camera: Ata Mehrad
Available 12 June, 14:00 – 21 June, 13:59
Due to license rights this film will be only available for users from Germany.
Meysam, a 17-year-old boy, lives in Darvaze Ghar, Tehran’s poor neighbourhood known as the last stop for prostitutes, heroin addicts, thieves, and the fringes of society. Meysam is witty, good-looking and funny, and he loves underground music. He also helps his father, a former heroin addict, who now runs a grocery store.
Tamaroz (Simulation)
Iran 2017
84 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Written and directed by Abed Abest
Camera: Hamid Khozouie Abyaneh
Cast: Abed Abest, Vahid Rad, Majid Yousefi, Danial Khojasteh, Shahrzad Seifi, Asghar Piran, Javad Pourheidari, Javad Pouladi, Alireza Saveh Doroudi, Iman Basim, Hananeh Shahrokhi, Hassan Jafari, Hossein Jafari
Available 12 June, 14:00 – 21 June, 13:59
Due to license rights this film will be only available for users from Germany.
Three young friends are planning for a party during the weekend at an old man’s house. Little do they know that this gathering will lead to a tragic turn of events for them all.
Siah-o sefid (Black and White)
Iran 1972
4 min, no dialogue
Written and directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless
Camera: Mehrdad Fakhimi, Sohrab Shahid Saless
Cast: Jafar Zehni, Habibollah Akbariani, Mohammad Reza Zehni
This film is an important part of the film series, but unfortunately cannot be shown online due to licensing reasons.
A stop-motion animated film in one take, shot in one day as a commission for the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults. Two boys quarrel over a football, which then turns into a bigger fight between their parents. The film received awards at the Tehran International Children’s Film Festival.
Falgoosh (Blames and Flames)
Iran 2011
28 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Written and directed by Mohammadreza Farzad
Available 12 June, 14:00 – 21 June, 13:59
The history of the Iranian revolution as the history of cinema: In 1978, on the verge of the Islamic revolution, more than 130 cinemas burned down across Iran, including 28 in Tehran. Great strikes, signs of the onset of the revolution, affected cinema at large. The debates also addressed the films as such: Which films should be shown, which should be made? Which cinema could or should be abandoned, what did people want and what were they allowed to see? After the cinemas were closed or burned down, the state of things is inverted in “Falgoosh”. The characters abandon the screen, the people take to the streets and try to direct themselves. And cinema becomes the spectator.
Survival
Iran 2015
8 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Written and directed by Masoud Hatami
Camera: Mohamad Hadadi
Cast: Parham Deldadeh, Sirous Gholipour, Masoud Hata
Available 12 June, 14:00 – 21 June, 13:59
In the middle of nowhere, two people are living in a lake and they are using corpses to survive.
Koshtargah (Slaughterhouse)
Iran 2015
24 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Written and directed by Behzad Azadi
Camera: Shahin Araqi
Cast: Bahram Azadi, Mohammad Karimi, Mohammad Rahmati, Parmida Ekrami, Himan Azadi, Salah Adim, Roshanak Shokri, Fawzie Alami
Available 12 June, 14:00 – 21 June, 13:59
Four teenage friends have big plans for their lives. They want to get rich quickly by dealing drugs in their neighbourhood. First, they have to test the drug they got from the smuggler. But there’s an unexpected twist in the plan and the situation gets out of control.
Heyvan (Animal)
Iran 2017
16 min, Farsi with English subtitles
Written and directed by Baham Ark, Bahram Ark
Camera: Ali Abpak
Cast: Davoud Nourpour
Available 12 June, 14:00 – 21 June, 13:59
A man who wants to pass the border, disguises himself as a ram.