Synopsis


Twenty tells the story of Mr Soleimani (Parastui), a grim-faced lonely old man who pays minimum wages to, and demands maximum hours from, the put-upon staff at his banqueting hall which caters to both weddings and funerals.

Yet another slice of bleak Iranian realism, Abdolreza Kahani’s black-and-white melodrama Twenty is aimed straight at the heartstrings.



Styled to look like a documentary take on today’s Tehran, this depicts a miserable existence on the bottom rung of Iranian society, and Kahani is evidently courting sympathy from western audiences here.

Twenty’s special jury prize at Karlovy Vary indicates that he may have succeeded, but larger audiences seem unlikely to respond so enthusiastically, given that there is little in the cinematic language or the plot here to sustain their interest.

Cast: Parviz Parastui, Mahtab Keramati, Ali-Reza Khamseh, Mehran Ahmadi, Ali-Reza Hosseini, Fereshteh Sadre Orafaee, Habib Rezaie