Synopsis

"This is the story of a man who wants to emigrate with his wife and child, an unwilling emigration! Just like our ancestors, our grandfathers.

But, alas! they were more free than us to go any where they wanted to... How is it now, anyway? Now... you only see walls all around, they wants money, visa ... but this poor man has one possesion only, his life ..." (Extract of Dialogue)

Directors View:

On one hand, LOW HEIGHTS is my twelfth film and on the other hand, it is my first movie in a new genre. It will be understood as the audiences watch the film and I admit honestly that I don't know which one is closer to truth.

Cast: Leila Hatami, Hamid Farrokhnezhad, Gohar Kheirandish, Reza Shafiei Jam, Amir Aghaei, Mehdi Saki, Mohammad Ali Inanlou, Shahram Ghaedi

* * * * *

Axis of Cinema

The 2002 Fajr Film Festival in Tehran showed Iran's filmmakers pondering their society's woes through variations on a theme: hopelessness

The festival's big audience favorite, meanwhile, was Ebrahim Hatamikia's Low Altitude, a wild, extravagantly stylized comedy-drama about a man so desperate for work that he takes his extended family and hijacks a plane out of Iran. As the family leaves to board their ill-starred flight, the terminal's TVs erupt with CNN images of the Sept. 11 disasters.

And when the protagonist, having learned that Iran's Arabic neighbors would extradite him, considers steering the plane to Israel instead, he's told, "Lots of Iranians would like to be with you on this trip!" Watching Low Altitude with the other foreign guests, I could only imagine the cheers and whoops that line would evoke from an Iranian audience. And I could only wonder how much longer the winter of Iran's discontent can possibly last. -- G O D F R E Y    C H E S H I R E