Noticias

In For Rana, we meet Aref (Hamed Behdad), a stunt rider in an Iranian circus, and his wife, Sodabeh (Pantea Panahiha). Their daughter, Rana (Tasnif Hosseini), represents innocence in their humble existence. Financially pressured, their love is braided into a home that teeters on the edge of disaster, much like Aref’s dangerous acts.

The instigating episode is severe: Rana’s heart condition deteriorates, demanding an immediate transplant. This moment converts their lives into a frenetic race against the clock, raising the emotional stakes. It’s a painful reminder of life’s impermanence—one moment, they’re a family; the next, they’re seized by impending loss.

As the family strives to find a donor, they face the avarice of the possible donor’s family, who demand a large sum. The film digs into the ethical quandaries of desperation, asking how far one will go for love. In this moral quagmire,...

It is somewhat a sad fact of the human condition that it often takes an extreme situation to bring out the best in people. Given a specific environment, these situations come more often than you might think, thus creating a tremendous emotional challenge for the family unit and its members who have to master them or just do whatever is best. In his director debut “For Rana”, Iranian filmmaker Iman Yazdi, who previously directed short features and worked for Iranian television, aims to tell a story about two families from different social backgrounds within his home country, with a tragedy connecting their fates. “For Rana” is a family drama, but considering the issue of class present in the two families it also wants to show this theme and its consequences within society.

For Rana is screening at Busan International Film Festival

Aref (Hamed Behdad) has been a motocross stunt driver for many years,...

Iranian director Iman Yazdi, who was set to present his directorial feature debut For Rana in competition at Busan International Film Festival, has seen his travel plans disrupted due to heightened tensions in the Middle East.

Yazdi’s flights out of Iran have been cancelled along with many others as conflicts escalate amid fears of a wider war in the region. There is a high chance the filmmaker may not be able to make it to Busan in South Korea if airlines continue to steer clear of Iranian airspace.

The world premiere of family drama For Rana is scheduled for...

Mahdi Asghari Azghadi was born in 1995 in Mashhad. He earned a bachelor's degree in film directing and a master's degree in cinema from the city's University of the Arts. He is also a member of the National Elite Foundation of Iran. He is writing his thesis on the theme of combining different genres in a single film. He is a well-known film professor in Iran and runs a prestigious film school in Tehran, the Clapp Film School. He writes and directs television films and programs. He is also the author of a novel Degh-Marg, which means Tragic Death. “Maria” is his first feature-length fiction film.

On the occasion of Maria screening at Fica Vesoul, we speak with him about the real story behind the movie, the women in the film, the bad impact of cinema, casting, the most difficult scene to shoot, the success of the film in Tokyo, and...

It’s hard to watch “Empty Nets” and not think of “Luzzu,” the recent, poignant Sundance prizewinner from Malta: In both films, enterprising young men left in the lurch by a national financial crisis must resort to black-market fishing to, well, stay afloat. (All we need is a third film paddling in such forbidden waters to declare a new neo-realist trend.) In “Luzzu,” the protagonist was a lifelong fisherman passionate about his trade, while Behrooz Karamizade’s lean, engrossing, Iran-set debut centers on a handy novice merely looking to make a quick buck. In this economy, however, such differences prove immaterial. It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from, unless you’re coming from money: You’re otherwise all sinking below the surface.

Premiering in the main competition at Karlovy Vary, this is a confidently quiet, elegiac first feature from Iranian-German writer-director Karamizade — who brings a certain European arthouse...

You know the modern world is in a dark place when even a middle-aged Iranian woman says that things were better in the old days. Indeed, for his feature debut, director Behrooz Karamizade has fashioned an intelligent and thoughtful drama that should travel well in today’s climate of insecurity, offering a fresh perspective on a multiplicity of worldwide issues while adding an especially nuanced subplot exploring the refugee crisis and the mechanics of people-trafficking.

The setting is rural Iran, on the coast of the Caspian Sea, where twentysomething Amir (Hamid Reza Abbasi) is struggling to make ends meet. Amir is in love with Narges (Sadaf Asgari) and wants to marry her, but Narges comes from a traditional family who think Amir is beneath her and plan to marry their daughter to the highest bidder. After a date at the funfair, where she narrowly dodges a relative,...

Panah Panahi juggles joy, heartbreak and surreal humour in a road movie his imprisoned father would be proud of

Earlier this month, the irrepressible Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi found himself detained in Tehran and facing six years in jail. It’s the latest move in a long and largely fruitless campaign by the Iranian authorities to silence an artist who continues to be an international beacon of inspiration – not least to his son, Panah Panahi, who worked on his father’s most recent films, and who here makes his own triumphant feature debut as writer and director.

We meet the stars of Hit the Road in the borrowed car in which they will spend much of the film. Hassan Madjooni is the outwardly grouchy Dad, wrestling toothache and a broken leg, the authenticity of which is slyly doubted by Pantea Panahiha’s quietly exasperated but endlessly loving Mum. In the...

Picturehouse Entertainment has revealed the trailer for Panah Panahi’s directorial debut ‘Hit The Road.’

Driving across endless miles of rugged landscape, a family navigates a long road trip alongside a range of conflicting emotions. Dad’s got a broken leg and a mood to match whilst Mum fusses over her two children and their pet dog. And when he’s not drawing on the car windows, their energetic youngest son couldn’t be louder as he sings along to the car radio whilst his elder brother tries to concentrate on the road ahead. As the journey twists and turns and their destination draws ever closer, the chaotic claustrophobia in the car grows as does the love and affection they have for each other.

Panah Panahi’s debut feature is draws ever closer, the chaotic claustrophobia in the car grows as does the love and affection they have for each other.

This review of “Hit the Road” was first published on April 22, 2022, after its New York City opening.

“The cockroach thinks its baby is beautiful,” says the middle-aged father to his 6-year-old.

“Are we cockroaches?” the child asks. After pausing, the father replies, “We are now.”

This exchange, playful on the surface, but heavy with quiet grief, occurs late in “Hit The Road,” the stunning debut feature written and directed by Panahi about a troubled road trip, one involving a young man fleeing Iran for an uncertain future. He’s referred to frequently as a “traveler,” but there’s more to it than that.

The young man is Farid (Amin Simiar). He’s driving to a meeting spot, where masked guides on motorcycles are meant to smuggle him into Turkey. Along for the ride are his mother (Pantea Panahiha), father (Hassan Majooni) and young brother (Rayan Sarlak).

There’s been a summons,...

You are dropped into the middle of a journey. It’s unclear where exactly you’re going, at least at first. Still, a few early signposts suggest possible destinations: precocious-kid comedy, existential-crisis drama, Ransom of Red Chief-type ironyfest, paranoid thriller, regional road-to-nowhere allegory. You start to pick up that it’s a family you’re traveling with, a foursome who fit easily into familiar slots. Dad (Hasan Mujuni) is cranky, bearded, partially crippled by having his leg in a cast. Mom (Pantea Panahiha) is fretful, slightly fussy, extremely nurturing — possibly,...

Ah, with the slowly rising temps and with most schools getting ready to finish u[ their “grade years”, many families are hearing the call of the open highway. Maybe more so than other forms of mass transportation, driving may be the best option with new “variants’ popping up . But long hours in such “close quarters’ can certainly put a strain on the old “family dynamic”. And that’s probably true with families all around the world. In this new release, we’re in the ‘passenger seat’ for a winding journey through the battered dusty highways and byways of Iran. What really complicates this trek is what’s “packed away” with the bottled water and snacks, namely some big secrets. So, will these “hidden agendas” keep locked away when they Hit The Road?

This story begins with a “rest stop’ off the shoulder of a baking trail full of sand and rocks. Papa (Hasan Majuni) is trying to nap in the back seat, while his left leg, which has been in a plaster cast for a loooong while, stretches into the front armrests. Of course, his slumber is thwarted by his “spirited” six-year-old son who’s mainly known as “little bro” (Rayan Sarlak). Meanwhile, his older “big bro” (Amin Simiar) walks around the borrowed SUV, looking for dents and leaks. In the front passenger seat, Mama (Pantea Panahiha) is jolted awake by her little boy’s hidden cell phone he had promised not to bring it along, so she grabs it and dashes away to hide it under a nearby rock, insisting that they will pick it up...

The Road (Jaddeh Khaki) Kino Lorber Reviewed for Shockya.com & BigAppleReviews.net, linked from Rotten Tomatoes by Harvey Karten Director: Panah Panahi Screenwriter: Panah Panahi Cast: Hassan Madjooni, Pantea Panahiha, Rayan Sarlak, Amin Simiar Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 4/8/22 Opens: April 22, 2022 “Hit the Road” takes place in a car but is unlike most […]

The post Hit The Road Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

No filmmaker in Iran is immune to the pressures of censorship. Movies made in the country must gain approval from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance not only for distribution purposes but for shooting permits as well. For directors and producers with stories that violate government standards — say, a scene where a woman removes her traditional headscarf, or another violation of Islamic law — the options for maintaining creative freedom are simple: Submit a script with the offending scenes removed, then shoot them anyway. Or hit the road.

Panah Panahi took the second option for his acclaimed debut, but “Hit the Road” is hardly an anomaly. “In a sense the car becomes a second house for us Iranians,” Panahi said in a phone interview with IndieWire ahead of his movie’s U.S. release. “There is a level of security inside the car. That’s why you see so many road films.

Early on in a family’s drive across northwest Iran, the father, Khosro (Hassan Madjooni), looks out the window at what used to be the largest lake in the Middle East, Lake Urmia. “Years ago, we would swim in it. Now, you can only have a dust bath.” Except for the unflaggingly effervescent younger son (Rayan Sarlak), the family all carry a similar blank experience that at first seems to come from the fatigue of a family road trip gone on too long. But then we deduce, detail by detail, that their worn expressions instead signal resignation, of worries that have no resolution. Hit The Road is an account of family separation from the older son, 20-year old Farid (Amin Simiar), who has to flee across the Turkish border for an offense for which he was arrested and released on a bail.We’re never told what Farid’s offense was,...

"One day, we'll laugh at all this." Kino Lorber has revealed an official trailer for Hit the Road, an award-winning, outstanding little indie film from Iran. It's the feature debut of filmmaker Panah Panahi, who just so happens to be the son of acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. This premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival last year in the Director's Fortnight section and ended up with tons of rave reviews (one of my favorites of the fest). The film follows a chaotic, tender Iranian family that has embarked upon a a road trip across a rugged landscape and fussing over the sick dog and getting on each others' nerves along the way. Only the mysterious older brother is quiet, as he is headed somewhere else. Panah Panahi "makes a striking feature debut with this charming, sharp-witted, and deeply moving comic drama." The film stars Pantea Panahiha, Hasan Majuni, Rayan Sarlak,...

Named one of the best films of 2022 by IndieWire, Panah Panahi’s feature debut “Hit the Road” finally premieres in theaters April 22 after much acclaim on the festival circuit. Below, and exclusive on IndieWire, watch the trailer for the upcoming release.

This isn’t your average family road trip. “Hit the Road” proves to be a quietly existential voyage, fueled by a husband and wife — played by Hassan Madjooni and Pantea Panahiha — as they smuggle their eldest child (Amin Simiar) out of Iran. Rayan Sarlak stars as their younger son.

Director Panahi himself is the son of the great filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who is still banned from making movies and from leaving the country.

“Hit the Road” premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and was later screened at the New York Film Festival. The film premieres April 22 at New York’s Film Forum as a Kino Lorber release.

Over the course of the road trip,...

Panah Panahi is the son of the acclaimed Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi, the winner of many prizes at top film festivals and the auteur who was sentenced to 6 years in prison and 20-year filmmaking ban for his socially critical work. Panah inherited his father’s filmmaking talent, got his filmmaking education and learned the tricks of the trade by assisting his father and even co-editing his film “3 Faces” (2018). “Hit the Road” is Panahi Junior’s feature directing debut that was selected for Directors Fortnight at Cannes. We had the chance to see it at Sarajevo’s Open Air section.

“Hit the Road“ is screening at Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema

Hit the Road opens to the sounds of Chopin’s piano music over the black screen before the action starts in the car. A hyperactive, obviously bored boy (Rayan Sarlak), pretend-plays the keyboard drawn on the...

The BFI London Film Festival 2021 has named Panah Panahi’s Hit The Road as its best film of the competition. Panahi’s debut film covers the drama in the chaotic claustrophobia of a car, as an energetic child (Rayan Sarlak) clambers over his surly father (Hassan Madjooni), whose broken leg – and mood – take up considerable space. In the front, mother (Pantea Panahiha) fusses over her other son in the driver’s seat (Amin Simiar), whose sullen face stays fixed on the deserted horizon. Nobody mentions where they are going, but knowledge of their unspoken destination causes concern, turning despair into affection and some very eccentric behavior. Add in a soundtrack of 1970s Iranian pop as the cherry on the cake. The films in the competition explore a fascinating breadth of themes, from cave mapping in the Calabrian mountains to the military dictatorship in 1980s Buenos Aires, playground politics through the...

Panah Panahi’s Hit the Road wins award for ‘distinctive film-making that captures essence of cinema’

A tender and unexpectedly funny story about a family’s road trip through the twisting desert highways and misty green valleys of northwestern Iran has won the most prestigious prize at this year’s London film festival.

Hit the Road, the debut by Panah Panahi – son of esteemed Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi – centres on a family of four making a run for the border, as the father (Hassan Madjooni) struggles with a broken leg, the mother (Pantea Panahiha) laughs when she’s holding back tears, the youngest (Rayan Sarlak) explodes into car karaoke, and the older son (Amin Simiar) remains mysteriously sullen. Nobody mentions where they’re going, but knowledge of their unspoken destination turns despair into affection and eccentric behaviour, all set to the soundtrack of 70s Iranian pop.

There’s not much exposition in Hit the Road. In fact it takes most of Panah Panahi’s remarkable directorial debut, about a family traveling across northwestern Iran, to understand the full gravity of this noisy and comical road trip. Yet this movie’s power comes in the slow-burning revelations found through the straightaway desert roads and rolling lush hills, which amount to an emotionally wrenching crescendo.

Unlike most road movies, Hit the Road begins on the side of the highway, inside a stationary SUV, where the majority of this drama plays out. Panahi’s camera pans around the center console to find a sleepy Khosro (Hassan Madjooni), his wife (Pantea Panahiha), and their chatterbox 6-year-old son (Rayan Sarlak) tapping his fingers on top of his father’s casted leg and petting their terminally ill dog. Outside, anxiously circling the vehicle, is elder son Farid (Amin Simiar), driving everyone to...

A family road trip movie in which we never quite know where the film is heading (and are often lied to about why), “Hit the Road” may be set amid the winding desert highways and gorgeous emerald valleys of northwestern Iran, but Panah Panahi’s miraculous debut is fueled by the growing suspicion that its characters have taken a major detour away from our mortal coil at some point along the way. “Where are we?” the gray-haired mom (Pantea Panahiha) asks into the camera upon waking up from a restless catnap inside the SUV in which so much of this film takes place. “We’re dead,” squeaks the youngest of her two sons (Rayan Sarlak) from the back seat, the six-year-old boy already exuding some of the most anarchic movie kid energy this side of “The Tin Drum.”

They aren’t dead — at least not literally, even if the adorable...

With a touch on the pedal so light you don’t even feel the woosh, Panah Panahi, son of Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi, goes instantaneously from zero to 60 with his debut feature, “Hit the Road.” Doubly surprising, he does it repeatedly within the film too, from scene to scene — and within scenes, from moment to moment — accelerating and decelerating so abruptly, switching moods like gears, like radio stations, that by the end we should be rattling around inside, carsick, dying to get out. Instead, its 93 minutes whip by so airily, it’s possible not to realize how much you’ve learned to love the family whose road trip you’ve shared in, until the credits roll and you immediately start to miss them.

“Hit the Road,” again like its director, works from a standing start. The car — which we learn is a borrowed vehicle — has pulled in by the side...

Panah Panahi is the son of the acclaimed Iranian dissident filmmaker Jafar Panahi, the winner of many prizes at top film festivals and the auteur who was sentenced to 6 years in prison and 20-year filmmaking ban for his socially critical work. Panah inherited his father’s filmmaking talent, got his filmmaking education and learned the tricks of the trade by assisting his father and even co-editing his film “3 Faces” (2018). “Hit the Road” is Panahi Junior’s feature directing debut that was selected for Directors Fortnight at Cannes. We had the chance to see it at Sarajevo’s Open Air section.

Hit the Road opens to the sounds of Chopin’s piano music over the black screen before the action starts in the car. A hyperactive, obviously bored boy (Rayan Sarlak), pretend-plays the keyboard drawn on the cast on his father’s (Hassan Madjooni) leg. The mother (Pantea Panahiha of...

A family goes on a road trip with a difference in Hit The Road, a promising first feature from Panah Panahi, which showed in the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight section. The son of Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi delivers a lean but affecting drama with a winning humorous streak.

When we meet the unnamed mother (Pantea Panahiha) and father (Hassan Madjooni), they are traveling into rugged landscape with their two sons. Their eldest (Amin Simiar), a grown man, appears preoccupied. Their youngest is played by Rayan Sarlak, who was six at the time of filming and is a magnetic performer — Hit The Road’s greatest comic weapon. A lively, borderline hyperactive kid with a precocious way with words, he indulges in witty banter with his parents, in particular his father, who uses humor to distract and protect him from mysterious adult matters.

It becomes clear to the audience that the trip has a serious,...

Panah Panahi is the son of acclaimed director Jafar Panahi, who was arrested and banned from making films, as well as being placed under house arrest. It would seem that Panah Panahi is not afraid to follow in his father’s footsteps for this is a brave tale.

This film is so simple and so complex, so full of humour and immense pain, abounding with love and just a little conflict. It is a road movie, a family film, a political tale and a metaphysical journey. Beautifully crafted and with four fine performances, it is hard to overstate the love I feel for his exceptional debut filmHit the Road.

As the title suggests, the story is indeed about a road trip. The country is Iran, the starting point is unknown and the destination nameless. The car holds a family of four: mum (Pantea Panahiha), dad (Hassan Madjooni) and their two sons.