I had the opportunity of watching Bahman Maghsoudlou’s Dariush Mehrjui Making The Cow and I was absolutely impressed by the great quality of this well-made, informative and at the same time entertaining documentary. Dariush Mehrjui Making The Cow not only deals with all aspects of this icon of international cinema, but also portrays the Iranian society and the state of art and culture state during the time of making The caw. After watching Dariush Mehrjui Making The Cow, I encountered the following interview with Bahman Maghsoudlou by Ali Moosavi in Film International about the past work of this filmmaker and…
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Safe Place, Croatia’s Oscar Entry directed by Juraj Lerotić is about a traumatic event—a suicide attempt—creates a rift in the family’s everyday life. Their lives fundamentally change, as if they are waging a war invisible to everyone else. The source of the story is autobiographical, it is addressed in the film and highlighted by the fact that the author/director plays himself. The following is our interview with Juraj Lerotić about making of Safe Place: https://vimeo.com/772185261 Juraj Lerotić was born in 1978, in Kiel, Germany. He studied early childhood education and theology and later graduated from the Academy of Dramatic Art…
Aurora’s Sunrise, directed by Inna Sahakyan is the story of Aurora, a teenager when she loses her family to the first genocide of the twentieth century, a nightmare that she herself barely survived. But when asked to not just remember but relive this experience all over again, she said “yes”. https://vimeo.com/767732141 In 1915, as WWI raged on, the Ottoman Empire singled out its entire Armenian population for destruction. Only 14 years old at the time, Aurora’s story was tragically relatable. Forced onto a death march towards the Syrian desert, she lost her entire family before being kidnapped and sold into…
Prey is a Hulu original action/sci-fi movie and a prequel to the movies in the Predator franchise. Set 300 years in the past, this Predator origin story tells the tale of the very first alien encounter, threatening the lives of the Comanche Nation. Before there was Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger), there was Naru (Amber Midthunder)—a skilled and resourceful warrior leading the fight against a high-tech predator—leaving her no other choice but to hunt…or be hunted. https://youtu.be/wZ7LytagKlc The following is an interview with Claudia Castello, the Editor of the PREY Bijan Tehrani: How did you start as a film editor and what…
For Andreas Fontana’s full-length feature debut as a director, Azor, he’s chosen to plunge straight into a time of dirty politics and the dictatorship in 1980 Argentina, where wealth insulates the elite. Talking in-depth with Hamed Sarrafi, the Argentine writer-director says he loves collaborating with friends like co-writer Mariano Llinas and using a mix of seasoned and non-professional actors – and he was pragmatic enough to get Swiss funding and place a Geneva banker at the center of the plot – but he also admits he’s something of a control freak. He deliberately interviewed some of the worst people imaginable…
Hayedeh Safiyari ( born 1960, Gorgan, Iran) is an Iranian film editor and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She graduated in Art Cinema from School of Television and Cinema, a prestigious film school in Iran and decided to pursue her professional career in film editing. The following is our exclusive interview with Hayedeh Safiyari about working with Asghar Farhadi as editor of majority of his films: https://vimeo.com/726401943 Immediately after graduating from the university, she was recruited in the national TV of Iran. The majority of the edits she has carried out are for internationally…
The Shadow on the wall, directed by Mehregan Pezeshki and Arash Kamali Sarvestani, is a surreal journey of an Iranian American artist, who is dealing with sexual trauma in her past. She tries to deal with post trauma through her art. This is a surreal story about an artist who moved from east to west. She is dealing with her memories from the past. Her dreams, memories, conscience and unconscious are all intertwined to each other and it seems impossible to differentiate these worlds from each other. In her story, she is dealing with the multi cultural paradoxes of the…
When Pomegranates Howl written and directed by Granaz Moussavi tells a story of Hewad, a nine-year-old boy who lives on the streets in the capital of Afghanistan – Kabul. Following the loss of both his father and brother, Hewad decides to create a business by working as a cart pusher, which he enjoys doing every day. By working as such, and loading the carts with goods, he travels throughout Kabul in hope to raise enough money for his family. Hewad’s dream of becoming a movie star comes to live when he stumbles on an Australian photographer. Here is our video…
In Playground, Belgium’s Oscar Entry in the Shortlist by writer-director Laura Wandel , the everyday reality of grade school is seen from a child’s-eye-view as an obstacle course of degradation and abuse. Following 7-year-old Nora and her big brother Abel, we see Nora struggling to fit in before finding her place on the schoolyard. One day, she notices Abel being bullied by other kids, and though she rushes to protect him by warning their father, Abel forces her to remain silent, while he endures more humiliation and harassment by his peers. Transposing the gritty realism of such filmmakers as Jacques…
In Compartment No. 6, Finland’s Oscar entry , shortlisted by Academy Awards for the Best International Film Oscar, a young Finnish woman escapes an enigmatic love affair in Moscow by boarding a train to the arctic port of Murmansk. Forced to share the long ride and a tiny sleeping car with a Russian miner, the unexpected encounter leads the occupants of compartment no. 6 to face the truth about their own yearning for human connection. To learn more about making of Compartment No. 6 we had an interview with its director Juho Kuosmanen: https://vimeo.com/666612504 JUHO KUOSMANEN (director, co-screenwriter) Juho Kuosmanen…