UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema 2022
An In-Person Screening Event
BILLY WILDER THEATER - HAMMER MUSEUM
Los Angeles
The UCLA Film & Television Archive continues its long tradition of celebrating the best cinema from Iran and the Iranian diaspora with the latest edition of its annual survey of works by Iranian filmmakers, past and present.
The global pandemic disrupted film production the world over and the resilience of Iranian filmmakers around the world comes through in this year’s lineup. This year’s edition again features an inspiring mix of debuts from emerging directors and the latest work from established masters.
We’re thrilled to kick-off the program with Hit the Road, the remarkable debut feature from writer-director Panah Panahi, son and regular collaborator of Jafar Panahi. New feature film premieres follow on every day of the series along with special screenings of the prize-winning shorts from the latest Farhang Foundation Short Film Festival. These are just a few of the discoveries to be found among this year’s Celebration program along with special guests to be announced as they are confirmed.
All films from Iran and in Persian with English subtitles, except where noted.
Farhang Foundation is proud to be the sole sponsor of the UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema.
Friday, April 29 – 7:30pm
Hit The Road
Iran, 2021
In his feature debut, writer-director Panah Panahi (son of Jafar Panahi) spins something wonderful from an activity best known for its exacerbations: the family road trip. When the film opens, they’re already underway: father, in the back seat with a broken leg and their precocious younger boy; mother, silver-haired and up front with their oldest son who’s behind the wheel. (The family dog is in there somewhere, too.) Where they’re going and why is unclear but if their journey has mysterious origins, the family itself feels eminently familiar. Tightly packed in the car, they’re comfortable together with their well-worn affections and rivalries—even if a new anxiety feels every present underneath. At each rest stop, Panahi reveals more of the thriller entangled with his intimate family portrait but in the end it’s the drama of the everyday that wins out—the longing, the hope, and the hurt of parents sending their kid off into the world on their own.
Director: Panah Panahi
Screenwriter: Panah Panahi
Cast: Hassan Madjooni, Pantea Panahiha, Rayan Sarlak, Amin Simiar
DCP, Color, 93 min.
Saturday, April 30 – 3pm
Absence
2021
North American Premiere
At a crossroads in his life, a middle-aged son journeys from Tehran to Prague to trace his father’s path through the tumultuous history of his own times only to find himself even more unmoored in the present. In his third feature as writer-director and star, Ali Mosaffa brings a wounded intensity to Rouzbeh on his quest to better understand his father, a communist intellectual who started a new life in Eastern Europe in the wake of the 1953 coup. Every clue he tracks down, however, deepens the mystery surrounding the man he thought he knew. Behind the camera, Mosaffa, mixes family drama and political history with the air of a cold war thriller.
Director: Ali Mosaffa
Screenwriter: Ali Mosaffa
Cast: Ali Mosaffa, Zuzana Stivínová, Magdalena Borová, Petra Nesvačilová, Zuzana Kronerová
DCP, Color, 100 min.
Saturday, April 30 – 7:30pm
Titi
Iran, 2020
California Premiere
Though its title may be taken from her name, Titi (Elnaz Shakerdoost) only gradually emerges from the periphery into the center of co-writer-director Ida Panahandeh’s moving and always surprising story of small lives and cosmic forces. A hospital cleaning woman, Titi accepts being overlooked by patients and families, but when a physics professor (Parsa Pirouzfar) with a brain tumor scribbles in a delirium an equation he’s been working on his entire career—only to lose it in the trash—Titi sees destiny calling. Guided by visions, but beset by terrestrial troubles—including her abusive, itinerant musician boyfriend (Houtan Shakiba)—Titi channels her mystical affinities to help this man of science find his way and, maybe, just maybe, save the world.
Director: Ida Panahandeh
Screenwriter: Arsalan Amiri, Ida Panahandeh
Cast: Elnaz Shakerdoust, Parsa Pirouzfar, Houtan Shakiba
DCP, Color, 102 min.
Preceded by
Exam
Iran, 2019
Farhang Foundation Short Film Festival—1st Prize Winner
Director Sonia K. Hadad plunges us into the harrowing day of a teenage girl (rising Iranian star Sadaf Asgari) who thought a math test was the worst she would have to face until she’s pressed into delivering illicit drugs on her way to school.
Director: Sonia K. Hadad
Screenwriter: Sonia K. Hadad, Farnoosh Samadi
Cast: Sadaf Asgari
DCP, Color, 16 min.
Sunday, May 1 – 3pm
Asteroid
Iran, 2021
U.S. Premiere
In a remote Iranian village, 12-year-old Ebrahim (Ebrahim Zarozehi) works harder than some of the adults who tower over him to help his single mom care for his five siblings and to save for their own home. He picks dates, waits on tourists at an eco resort (where his mother also works), tends horses at a local ranch and runs errands for anyone willing to pay. While the lure of Tehran seduces some of his friends away, Ebrahim, for all the daily hardships and demands, seems content to stick close to home. Through Ebrahim’s eyes, wise beyond their years, writer-director Mehdi Hoseinivand explores the rhythms and relationships of small town life in largely realist terms but at the film’s center is always a warm, caring story of Ebrahim and his family as they quietly, determinedly make their way in the world.
Director: Mehdi Hoseinivand Aalipour
Screenwriter: Mehdi Hoseinivand Aalipour
Cast: Ebrahim Zarozehi, Ghazal Shojaie
DCP, Color, 77 min.
Preceded by
Light Sight
Iran, 2016
Farhang Foundation Short Film Festival—2nd Prize Winner
As part of his final project to earn his M.A. in animation at Tehran University of Art, writer-director Seyed M. Tabatabaei orchestrates a dazzling display of color and design to depict a dream world that turns sinister when its lone inhabitant tries to reach beyond its horizons.
Director: Seyed M. Tabatabaei
Screenwriter: Seyed M. Tabatabaei
DCP, Color, 8 min.
Friday, May 6 – 7:30pm
The Wasteland
Iran, 2020
U.S. Premiere
With its rich black-and-white photography, rural, seemingly pre-industrial setting, long tracking shots and overriding sense of collapse, dispersal and doom, writer-director Ahmad Bahrami’s The Wasteland displays the unmistakable influence of Hungarian art house legend Béla Tarr. Bahrami’s command of these elements, however, is entirely his own. When the owner of a brick factory announces its imminent closure to the families who work there, it's the beginning of the end for a whole way of life as many of them have labored there for generations. Bahrami structures the film as a series of returns to the owner’s announcement, taking up, each time, the perspective of a different worker. Leaving chronology vague, he reveals the long suppressed secrets and resentments—often deliberately stoked by the patriarchal owner—that have simmered among the ethnically diverse community for years. Brilliantly balancing suspense and revelation, he builds to an ineluctable and devastating finale. Winner of the FIPRESCI Award for Best Film at the 77th Venice International Film Festival, The Wasteland marks an astonishing feature debut.
Director: Ahmad Bahrami
Screenwriter: Ahmad Bahrami
Cast: Ali Bagheri, Farrokh Nemati, Mehdi Nassaj, Majid Farhang, Mahdieh Nassaj
DCP, B/W, 103 min.
Saturday, May 7 – 3pm
The Locust
Iran/Germany, 2022
California Premiere
This was supposed to be Hanieh’s day. After years of battling and compromising with family, friends and fate in pursuit of a film career, her loosely autobiographical script is finally beginning pre-production with a read through. There’s even talk of interest from international festivals. Instead, her landlord comes calling for the rent, her mother demands she resolve some long simmering business, and the cast can’t stop hating on the film’s main character—the one Hanieh based on herself. In her second feature, writer-director Faeze Azizkhani captures the frenzy and frustration of a middle-aged dreamer watching her dream start to slip away. At the center of the whirlwind, Hanieh Tavassoli delivers a compelling and sympathetic portrayal of a woman struggling to maintain until tomorrow.
Director: Faeze Azizkhani
Screenwriter: Faeze Azizkhani
Cast: Hanieh Tavassoli, Pegah Ahangarani Farahani, Ali Mosaffa, Pedram Sharifi, Ramin Sadighi
DCP, Color, 79 min.
19 (Nouzdah)
Iran/Germany, 2021
U.S. Premiere
The latest film from prominent producer and director Manijeh Hekmat (Three Women) may be one of her most personal. From a hospital bed, Mitra, a silver-haired artist (Pantea Panahiha) reflects on her past and the history she’s lived through along the way. Reveries and regrets intermingle across an impressionistic montage of achingly beautiful scenes and episodes. Both an evocation and a summation of life’s bittersweet course, Hekmat has described the film, shot during the current pandemic, as a “narration of all the doubts of my generation—the fear and the trembling we have experienced all through our lives.”
Director: Manijeh Hekmat
Screenwriter: Manijeh Hekmat, Mahsa Mohebali, Jamileh Darolshafahi
Cast: Pantea Panahiha, Bozorgmehr Hosseinpour, Katayoon Amir Ebrahimi, Jamshid Ahangarani Farahani, Parisa Nemati Moghadam
DCP, Color, 77 min.
Saturday, May 7 – 7:30pm
Final Whistle
Iran, 2011
Best known for her striking on-screen performances in films by Iranian auteurs such as Dariush Mehrjoui, Tahmineh Milani and Abbas Kiarostami, Niki Karimi established herself as a filmmaker in her right when her directorial debut, One Night, premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2005. In One Night and her three subsequent features, Karimi brings urgent attention to the stories of women forced to navigate the sharp divisions of Iranian society. In her third feature, Final Whistle, writer-director Karimi explores those divisions from a more explicitly personal perspective through the story of a well-known filmmaker, played herself, suddenly confronted by her own privilege and the limits of fame when she becomes unexpectedly entangled in the struggles of a young extra she only needed for reshoots.
Director: Niki Karimi
Screenwriter: Niki Karimi
Cast: Niki Karimi, Shahab Hosseini, Ashkan Khatibi
DCP, Color, 90 min.
Sunday, May 8 – 3pm
The Majority
Iran, 2021
North American Premiere
A rural village in pre-revolution Iran has been struggling economically for years when the imminent return of a now wealthy former resident sparks hope that she’ll grant her hometown much needed financial aid. As the local bigwigs make bumbling plans for a grand welcome, a light satire of small town foibles seems in store but when the woman (Hadieh Tehrani) reveals the terrible price of her support, it becomes clear that co-writer-director Mohsen Gharaei has bigger themes on his mind. In adapting The Visit by Swiss dramatist Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Gharaei unflinchingly confronts the nature of collective guilt, human weakness and revenge as the town decides whether to sacrifice one among them for the benefit of all. Twists and turns abound as secrets are revealed, fingers are pointed and knives are sharpened right up until the shocking finale.
Director: Mohsen Gharaei
Screenwriter: Mohsen Gharaei, Mohammad Davoudi
Based on: the play Der Besuch der alten Dame by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Cast: Parviz Parastouie, Hadieh Tehrani, Hadi Hejazifar, Baran Kosari, Mahtab Nasirpour
DCP, Color, 120 min.
Sunday, May 8 – 7pm
Roshan
Iran, 2021
International Premiere
A middle-aged sad sack, Roshan (Reza Attaran) watches old movies and daydreams while his life falls apart around him. His wife has moved out with their young daughter, he’s facing eviction from their old apartment and the condo they bought years before to get a fresh start remains forever under construction, sapping cash and hope. Luckily, Roshan knows a trick: he uses his fingers to form a frame—like a movie director—to see only what he wants to see. Writer-director Rouhollah Hejazi (The Wedlock, screened in the UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema in 2014) deftly oscillates his own frame around Roshan as he stumbles through a series of, by turns, comic and troubling misadventures in this empathetic study of a man doing his best to keep reality at bay.
Director: Rouhollah Hejazi
Screenwriter: Rouhollah Hejazi
Cast: Reza Attaran, Sara Bahrami, Siamak Ansari
DCP, Color, 102 min.
Preceded by
Red Dress, No Straps
Iran, 2018
Farhang Foundation Short Film Festival—3rd Prize Winner
In director Maryam Mohajer’s poignant and beautiful animated collage of materials and memories, a young girl narrates the milestones of her life—getting her ears pierced, learning where babies come from, the fabulous red dress of her favorite pop star—against the backdrop of the Iran-Iraq War.
Director: Maryam Mohajer
Screenwriter: Maryam Mohajer
DCP, Color, 9 min.
Help support Farhang Foundation’s free programming!
Event Details
| Event Starts | 04/29/2022 |
| Event Ends | 05/08/2022 |
| Individual Price | Free Event - Registration Required |
| Location | Billy Wilder Theater - Hammer Museum |
