The UCLA Film & Television Archive will continue its long tradition of bringing the best cinema from Iran and the Iranian diaspora to Los Angeles. Ever mindful of the ongoing struggles facing Iranian filmmakers in their native country, this year’s program champions the work of new and emerging directors while bringing back to the screen a long-thought-lost landmark of Iranian cinema. Making its world restoration premiere, writer-director Marva Nabili’s The Sealed Soil (1977) is the earliest complete surviving feature film directed by an Iranian woman and returns to the big screen almost 50 years after Nabili smuggled a workprint of the film out of Iran in a suitcase on the eve of the Iranian Revolution. We are also once again happy to present selected finalists from the 2023 edition of the Farhang Foundation Short Film Festival. The power of the moving image to connect people otherwise distanced by cultural, political and national divides and to lift them up in times of crisis has been embodied nowhere more profoundly over the last several decades than in the humanism, artistry and courage of Iranian filmmakers. The Archive will highlight their work, again, at the Billy Wilder Theater.
June 14, 2024 – 7:30 pm
In-person:
filmmaker Sierra Urich, filmmaker Liam LoPinto, filmmaker-actor Arian Moayed, film subject Mitra Samimi-Urich.
The Old Young Crow
Japan/U.S., 2023
A captivating mix of live-action and animation brings to vibrant life the story of a young Iranian boy and a mysterious but inspiring encounter he had in a Tokyo cemetery.
DCP, color, in Persian and Japanese with English subtitles, 12 min. Director: Liam LoPinto. Screenwriter: Liam LoPinto. With: Naoto Shibata, Hassan Shahbazi, Keiko Yamashita.
Joonam
U.S., 2023
Director Sierra Urich’s Joonam, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023, weaves a beautiful and beguiling portrait of three generations of Iranian women living in the diaspora. Drawn to learn more about her family’s history, Urich documents conversations with her mother, Mitra, and her grandmother, Behjat, and reflects on their stories and memories to make sense of her own identity as a second generation immigrant raised in rural Vermont. Revelations poignant and painful transform their relationships to each other and themselves in a film that ever foregrounds the power of home.
DCP, color, in Azerbaijani, English and Persian with English subtitles, 100 min. Director: Sierra Urich.
June 15, 2024 – 7:30 pm
In-person: filmmaker Marva Nabili.
The Sealed Soil
Iran, 1977
Restoration world premiere
The predictable rhythms of daily life in a rural village belie the radical upheaval and quiet resistance at work in writer-director Marva Nabili’s history-making debut, the earliest complete surviving feature film directed by an Iranian woman. As her family and neighbors prepare to relocate their entire community to make way for a government-mandated construction project, a young woman rebels against the restrictions imposed on her after reaching marrying age. Refusing all suitors, she cultivates a private inner world that her family interprets as demonic possession. An extraordinarily subtle but powerful exploration of female subjugation and resistance, The Sealed Soil returns to the big screen after almost 50 years in this restoration world premiere.
DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 90 min. Director: Marva Nabili. Screenwriter: Marva Nabili. With: Flora Shabaviz.
Digitally restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by the Golden Globe Foundation, Century Arts Foundation, Farhang Foundation and Mark Amin. Restored from the 16mm original A/B negatives, color reversal internegative, magnetic track and optical track negative. Laboratory services by illuminate Hollywood, Corpus Fluxus, Endpoint Audio Labs, Audio Mechanics, Simon Daniel Sound. Special thanks to Thomas Fucci, Marva Nabili and Garineh Nazarian.
June 21, 2024 – 7:30 pm
Born Again Virgin
U.S./Iran, 2022
Farhang Short Film Festival 2nd Prize Winner
On the eve of her wedding a young woman faces intense pressure to undergo a surgical procedure intended to “restore” her virginity.
DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles. 11 min. Director: Teia Kane. Screenwriters: Saba Eskandari, Teia Kane.
Cause of Death: Unknown
Iran, 2023
A passenger van carrying a disparate group of travelers cross-country to Tehran becomes a microcosm of a society on the edge in writer-director Ali Zarnegar’s high-tension thriller. When one of them dies suddenly in the night with a relative fortune in U.S. currency, the others fear unwelcome entanglement with the authorities until fear turns to scheming and they each try to turn the situation to their advantage. Zarnergar ratchets up the suspense as secrets are revealed and paranoia mounts.
DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 104 min. Director: Ali Zarnegar. Screenwriter: Ali Zarnegar. With: Banipal Shoomoon, Alireza Sani Far, Neda Jebraeili.
June 22, 2024 – 7:30 pm
Titanic, Suitable Version for Iranian Families
Iran/France, 2023
A team of Iranian television censors debate the finer points of on-screen propriety while outside their office window more consequential forces are beginning to stir.
DCP, color, in Persian wth English subtitles, 15 min. Director: Farnoosh Samadi.
Roxana
Iran, 2023
A listless young man splits his time between caring for his mom (barely), hanging out at the local underground pool hall and spending his best friend’s money. A chance encounter with Roxana after her car is broken into focuses his attention and soon he’s centered his life around helping her recover a stolen camera she needs for her wedding photography business. Helping her solve her problems, however, only deepens his own. Writer-director Parviz Shahbazi builds an arresting take on the experience of young Iranians struggling to find their way and start their lives in a world where one misstep can have the direst of consequences.
DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 119 min. Director: Parviz Shahbazi. Screenwriter: Parviz Shahbazi. With: Yasna Mirtahmasb, Mahsa Mahsa Akbarabadi, Maede Tahmasbi. 119 min.
June 23, 2024 – 7:00 pm
Empty Nets
Germany/Iran, 2023
The rarefied but rough-and-tumble world of caviar smuggling is the milieu for writer-director Behrooz Karamizade’s feature debut. Amir and Narges are young and in love but that only means complications. She’s well-to-do with a father who demands a wealthy suitor. He’s working-class and newly unemployed. After finding work as a fisherman he’s determined to prove himself but shortcuts to quick cash prove too tempting as he feels Narges slipping away. Dramatic action on the Caspian Sea and in the back alleys of their coastal town makes this a particularly suspenseful critique of opportunity and tradition in Iran.
DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 101 min. Director: Behrooz Karamizade. Screenwriter: Behrooz Karamizade. With: Hamid Reza, Abbasi Sadaf Asgari, Keyvan Mohamadi.
June 28, 2024 – 7:30 pm
Lioness — A Freedom Project for Iran
U.S., 2023
Farhang Short Film Festival 3rd Prize Winner
A clarion call in support of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement and to honor the “tenacity and fearlessness” of Iranian women in their “unyielding pursuit … towards their emancipation.“
DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 5 min. Director: Arrad. Screenwriter: Arrad.
Achilles
Iran/Germany/France, 2023
Worn down by the insurmountable obstacles he faced trying to make films, Farid (Mirsaeed Molavian) has resigned himself to working as a caregiver at a hospital in Tehran. Even there, his quiet refusal of administrative decrees leads to a demotion and assignment to the high security psychiatric ward. At his lowest, Farid finds a path back to life through the figure of a mysterious patient who — he learns — has been institutionalized as a political prisoner and whom he helps escape. A riveting story of resistance, writer-director Farhad Delaram’s feature film debut made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 116 min. Director: Farhad Delaram. Screenwriter: Farhad Delaram. With: Mirsaeed Molavian, Behdokht Valian, Roya Afshar.
June 29, 2024 – 7:30 pm
Dark Matter
Iran, 2023
Director Karim Lakzadeh channels the French New Wave by way of Jim Jarmusch into this wildly unexpected and entirely welcome independent Iranian production. A trio of aspiring, young filmmakers throw caution — and the hijab (literally) — to the wind when they rob a local gangster to fund their DIY movie. Shot in black and white with an eye to bold angles, Dark Matter exudes a playful cool and an infectious love of cinema. This is a boy, a girl and a gun Iranian-style.
DCP, b&w and color, in Persian with English subtitles, 82 min. Director: Karim Lakzadeh. Screenwriter: Karim Lakzadeh. With: Shadab Mahdiar, Keyvan Parmar, Iman Sayyad Borhani.
June 30, 2024 – 7 pm
Lost Swan
Iran, 2022
Farhang Short Film Festival 1st Prize Winner
The haunting story of a rural school teacher who becomes a surrogate mother to raise funds for her gender transition surgery only to learn the prospective mother can’t pay.
DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 11 min. Director: Ehsan Abbassei. With: Shakiba Asgari, Sepideh Jafari, Reyhaneh Razi.
In the Land of Brothers
France/Iran/Netherlands, 2024
Directors Alireza Ghasemi and Raha Amirfazli tell a powerful story across three interconnected episodes of an Afghan refugee family’s generational struggle to make a home in Iran. Corrupt authorities, dehumanizing immigration laws and simply ironic twists of fate each take their toll. Nuanced and affecting performances from the largely non-professional cast and a piercing sense of trauma and injustice that never slips into the melodramatic contributed to Amirfazli and Ghasemi’s win for Best Directing in the World Cinema category at Sundance this year where their feature film debut made its world premiere.
DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 95 min. Directors: Alireza Ghasemi, Raha Amirfazli. Screenwriters: Alireza Ghasemi, Raha Amirfazli. With: Hamideh Jafari, Bashir Nikzad, Mohammad Hosseini.