I fell in love with cinema on a hot summer day
The Longest Night | Shabe Yalda
Plenty of Hope, Infinite Hope, Just Not for Us


A painful and deep journey into loss, betrayal and survival. One that keeps the viewer mesmerized.

Yesterday was a bitter day. The unbelievable end of a filmmaker who made me fall in love with cinema. In his films, her mother, Parvindokht Yazdanian with her carefree motherhood was always a factor that blurred the border between cinema and the real world. But yesterday, the same filmmaker who used to grab hold of heart of darkness and pull hope - however small - into his frame, fell into despair... A death that reminded us that real life is very different from cinema. Kafka was right: Ah, Plenty of Hope; Infinite Hope; Just Not for Us...

I fell in love with cinema with this movie. I don't know what was the first movie I ever saw or what was the first time I watched a movie in a movie theater, but I know that this movie made cinema an inseparable part of my life forever.



I saw the movie in the summertime of the year when weather was hot and I was a fifth grade student. I didn't know the director, nor did I know the complete details of the story. I just remember in a strange way that one fine day when I came home from school, my parents were watching this movie and were talking about it a lot. I remember that I sat for a few minutes and watched the man - the main character in the movie - who was performing those solitary rituals in the middle of anger, dancing and bitterness - and then I got bored and got up from the TV. But the next round of exposure on that hot summer day was different. I don't know whether it was because of the sad story of a lonely man that I didn't know much about, or because of the distant relationship between a father and his daughter - whose house had the color and smell of her - or the presence of the star of those days, Mohammad Reza Foroutan, or the music that is intertwined with every moment of the film. Whatever it was, it made me fall in love with the movie and made me watch it over and over again. I still remember his dialogues and the film's unforgettable sequences. This movie - whether good or bad - has a place in my heart that is incomparable to any other movie. I fell in love with cinema on a hot summer day.



A little later, when I started reading the Film Magazine, I read his writings with a different passion. I remember that in the first issue of the Film Magazine that I got, he had written a note for Fireworks Wednesday (Chaharshanbe Soori), which made me go to the cinema and see the film asap.

Yesterday was a bitter day. The unbelievable end of a filmmaker who made me fall in love with cinema. In his films, her mother, Parvindokht Yazdanian with her carefree motherhood was always a factor that blurred the border between cinema and the real world. But yesterday, the same filmmaker who used to grab hold of heart of darkness and drag hope - however small - into the frame of his films, fell into despair... A death that reminded us that real life is very different from cinema. Kafka was right: Ah, Plenty of Hope; Infinite Hope; Just Not for Us... (Reviewed by Taraneh)


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Cast: Mohammad Reza Foroutan, Elham Charkhandeh, Parvindokht Yazdanian, Hilda Hashempoor, Maryam Pourahmad