

Damn you, Gaysorn Thavat, you made me cry. I thought this might be a run-of-the-mill feel-good drama about a feisty woman fighting the system but it was so much more.
Continue readingDamn you, Gaysorn Thavat, you made me cry. I thought this might be a run-of-the-mill feel-good drama about a feisty woman fighting the system but it was so much more.
Continue readingFirouzeh Khosrovani constructs a surprisingly tender collage of her parents’ lives that shows the fractures caused by the Iranian Revolution.
Continue readingBlerta Basholli’s quiet and forceful drama about the awfulness of war and its effect on women in patriarchal small-town society is a welcome companion-piece to Strong Female Lead (2021) where we saw how hard it was to maintain respect and autonomy, even when you are the elected leader of a country.
Continue readingWith a beginning that reminded me of the doleful surrealism of Lanthimos’s The Lobster (2015), Christos Nikou gives us an unexpectedly gentle portrait of a man struggling with grief.
Continue readingMessy, arty and wry, this mockumentary by Bill Benz weaves the true-life friendship of Carrie Brownstein and Annie Clark, stage-name St. Vincent, with a rumination on fame, identity and artifice.
Continue readingThis simple and joyful film, ostensibly about a young band trying to navigate flood waters to get to Tehran for an audition, hides a deeper meaning about the challenges for young Iranians.
Continue readingA bitter-sweet romance that, by stealth, will show you the precariousness of living in Palestine.
Continue readingA surprisingly wholesome, bloody revenge movie that sees a father’s suppressed rage wreak havoc when he thinks his wife’s death was part of an assassination plot.
Continue readingA glimpse into Iran between two revolutions, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s long-lost first feature manages to meld Vermeer-like drawing-room drama with gothic horror.
Continue readingIn carefully composed black and white imagery, we watch the Soviet propaganda machine go into overdrive to cover up 1960s labour strikes and a subsequent, ill-advised massacre.
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