Iran
Negar Esfandiary
Permission tells the story of Afrooz, the captain of Iran's National Futsal Team, who is stopped from joining her team at the Asia Cup Final because of the last minute whim of her estranged husband. It is based on Iranian football player Niloufar Ardalan, who in 2015 missed the Iran v Japan final of the Asia Games in Malaysia when her sports journalist husband Mahdi Toutounchi, enforced the right given to him by Islamic shar'ia law to prevent her from leaving the country.This second feature from director Soheil Beiraghi, described in his own Read more ...
graham.rickson
Iiro Rantala: My Finnish Calendar (ACT)Iiro Rantala’s little commentaries for each of these 12 short pieces are almost worth the CD price alone, offering an astute guide to the typical Finnish psyche alongside handy references to weather and hobbies. This is a journey from darkness to, er, darkness, though there's much light relief along the way. January is the “month of regret”, where Finns lament having overindulged at Christmas and even quitting the booze “won't make them happier people.” Rantala's mellow nocturne makes for beguiling listening, all the more so when set against the Read more ...
David Kettle
You can’t question Javaad Alipoor’s ambition. Ancient Mesopotamian empires, geological layers of chicken bones, the half-life of polysterene cups, Thomas Gainsborough, Susan Sontag, Iranian political history, gold iPhones, mallwave – all that and plenty more gets crammed into the mere hour of his breathless Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran at the Traverse. And that’s even without mentioning the wordy narration, video projections, Instagram feeds, live video and multipanelled set he employs to get his ideas across.It all leaves you more than a bit bewildered. And indeed, if Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
For all the bleakness of its subject matter, there’s considerable exhilaration to Ali Soozandeh’s animation feature Tehran Taboo. That’s due, in part, to the film’s breaking of many of the official “rules” of Iranian society, the myths of the theocracy that can’t, and don’t conform with the realities of human life. But there’s something wider as well, almost Dickensian, as the director presents his varied cast as players in a big city drama in which the Iranian capital itself becomes a protagonist, an entity bubbling with life, most of it “not conforming to Islamic virtues”.But what otherwise Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The journalist Frank Gardner has turned to fiction to illuminate with imagination the world that he knows inside out from years of reporting. His biographical trajectory, from scholar of the Middle East and the Arab world, through BBC correspondent in the region – he was shot by terrorists in Saudi Arabia, which left him confined to a wheelchair – has given rise to a riveting memoir, Blood & Sand, as well as a previous thriller, Crisis.We inhabit his fictional world on the basis that he will portray a riff on reality with nuance and understanding, all the better to escort us through the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Fox is very keen to stress that Deep State is the first original production by its Europe & Africa division, the most obvious sign of which is that none of it was shot in New York or LA. But it has clearly been designed as a sleek international thriller with bags of export potential (it’s already being sold in the US and Europe, and series two is in the works), a kind of Jason Bourne-meets-The Night Manager.It may not be the most original show to have walked the face of the earth, but it packs a heavyweight cast and oozes cinematic gravitas with its luxurious photography and atmospheric Read more ...
Katherine Waters
"I've been known to stroke concrete," writes self-professed geek Roma Agrawal – and from the very beginning of her memoir-cum-introduction to structural engineering, Built, where she describes her awe as a toddler at the glass and steel canyon of Manhattan, the structural is personal.The book is divided by materials, elements and concepts – “Sky”, “Clean”, “Rock”, “Force”, and “Clay” are all chapter titles – and each hones in on a particular structure by weaving together the stories of the people who built them, the social and historical context in which they were conceived and built, and the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Inversion may not be the catchiest of titles, but in the case of Iranian director Behnam Behzadi’s film its associations are multifarious. On the immediate level it refers to the “thermal inversion” that generates the smogs that engulf his location, Tehran, and also direct his story. Meteorologically, the phenomenon happens when a layer of warm air sits over one of cold, preventing it from rising, and trapping pollutants in the atmosphere.But there’s surely a deeper relevance in this story of family conflict – in particular sibling antagonism – that relates to the position of women in Iranian Read more ...
Matt Wolf
"Attention must be paid," we are famously told near the close of Death of a Salesman. And so it was this year on Oscar night when Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi won his second Academy Award for Best Foreign Film (A Separation was the first), this time for a movie that leans heavily on Arthur Miller's classic – though whether as crutch or inspiration will remain for individual viewers to decide.Intriguing moment to moment without being quite as searing as it surely intends, the movie may with time be remembered more for reasons to do with politics than with art: Farhadi refused to Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
A welcome antidote to the mood of a time which seems hell-bent on closing borders and building walls, The Music of Strangers is about a unique musical collective that breaks through division and reaffirms the potential of culture to unite. Subtitled “Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble”, Morgan Neville’s film is about the band that came into being at the beginning of the millennium on the initiative of the great Chinese-American cellist, giving us snapshots from its history, as well as the stories of some of its many and varied members.It focuses on the lives of these individuals of diverse Read more ...
Nick Hasted
We haven’t been here before. Tehran in 1980, bombed by its Iraqi invaders and jumpy with revolutionary fervour, is a place preoccupied with ordinary fear. Showing the normal if pressurised life he remembers from childhood in this demonised country is debutant writer-director Babak Anvari’s first coup. Letting this slide slowly into Persian myth and cinematic dread opens a new door in horror. The more arch A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night introduced the genre to the Iranian diaspora. Under the Shadow’s politicised, feminist tale turns the Tehran flat it barely leaves into a terror landmark. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Taxi Tehran fits neatly into a recent tradition of films set entirely in cars; Jim Jarmusch’s Night On Earth comes to mind, as well as Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten. Initially we’re led to believe that we’re watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary, assembled from dashboard footage shot on a cheap digital camera by director Jafar Panahi as he drives a taxi through the streets of Tehran. There’s inevitably more to it; that the various passengers’ conversations are scripted becomes quickly apparent, despite the winningly natural performances which Panahi draws from his uncredited cast.Already banned Read more ...