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IFFR 2023 Awards :: 'Le spectre de Boko Haram' and 'Endless Borders' are the victors Cyrielle Raingou’s documentary took home the Tiger Award, whilst Abbas Amini’s feature won the VPRO Big Screen Award, as the Dutch gathering celebrated its in-person comeback.. |
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Winners of the 2022 ‘Sepanta Awards’ :: 15th Annual Iranian Film Festival This year, the festival presented 50 films from Iran, USA, Italy, France, Luxembourg, Greece, UK, Canada, Australia, and Denmark…, ranging from fiction, documentary, short, animation…. to the music video.. |
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Opinion :: Will Venice Protests Help or Hurt filmmakers in Iran? As the Venice Film Festival celebrates Iranian cinema — with four Iranian films screening at the 79th Biennale — back home in Tehran, Iranian filmmakers and artists are facing the harshest crackdown in decades.. |
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Biennale Cinema 2022 :: Awards Ceremony Official Awards of the 79th Venice Film Festival. Announced by the five international Juries, chaired by Julianne Moore, during the Awards Ceremony that was held on Saturday 10th September at 7:00 pm.. |
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Coming: 15th Annual Iranian Film Festival! : San Francisco: Sep. 17-18 This year, the festival presents 50 films from Iran, USA, Italy, France, Luxembourg, Greece, UK, Canada, Australia, and Denmark…, ranging from fiction, documentary, short, animation…. to the music video. We are happy and proud to.. |
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Bizarrely Intriguing 'The Oath' ('Ghasam')
By Deborah Young hollywoodreporter.com, 4/29/2019
A woman organizes a busload of relatives to testify against her sister’s presumed murderer in Mohsen Tanabandeh’s drama.
One of those curious tales that suddenly sheds light on the darker corners of Iranian society, Mohsen Tanabandeh’s The Oath (screening at the Fajr Film Festival) plunges the viewer into the drama of a feudal judicial system.
It starts with the premise of an eye for an eye (the hanging of a murderer) and then introduces the age-old custom of the victim’s family accepting a pay-off in blood money that would let the killer get off scot-free.
Alternatively, if the family lets up pressure on the judge, the murderer may never stand trial at all. Though the story never really takes a definite moral stand one way or the other, it has enough drama and vivid characters to find festival favor.
This is the second feature by writer-director Tanabandeh, who made his directing debut with the 2015 comedy Guinness but is better known as an actor whose credits include his award-winning role as the son Azim in Afghanistan’s Oscar submission, Rona, Azim’s Mother.
One could argue that The Oath is hardly less surreal than the men who have to ride turkeys in Guinness. But here the stakes are much higher, particularly for the stalwart heroine Razieh (Mahnaz Afshar), and there is little in the way of comic relief.
Almost the entire film takes place in the close confines of a large bus which Razieh has rented at her own expense. She has rustled up the passengers from her close family – cousins, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces -- to swear in court that Razieh’s brother-in-law killed his young wife in a moment of jealousy, as was witnessed by two employees on the couple’s farm. What looks like an open-and-shut case is anything but, and if Razieh doesn’t get her crew to court by 9 a.m. the next morning, her sister's killer will go free. Cajoling and threatening the family, she keeps them aboard the bus and blocks various attempts at mutiny and backing down.
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 Julianne Moore leads red carpet protest in Venice for jailed Iranian filmmakers |
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