Ein Augenblick Freiheit

It is not easy just to give this rating point because I liked this movie in many ways and I know (as the director said in the theater of Max Ophüls Festival) that he researched and worked for this Film about 7 Years. There are two parts; the film itself is great, clever, funny and lovely in an intelligent way beside of some clichés. This part has all of his elements for a well-made humanistic movie. The other part is somehow political so actually I don't want to talk about it, because I don't know much about this. But as I know almost every other exile movies about this subject, this is just a remade and it repeats the story of the political refugees. I don't want to say that the story is not true but it is not fair to always represent this country in this way, specially in this time that we have not too much Movie titles about this country. So why always this subject? What about something new? Just look at the "Persepolis" , of course it is somehow the same way but the story is really wide ranged. So people, if you are going to invest so much time and money to make film, please go for something new. I think we have enough titles about this subject.

This is one of the films where I don't hesitate to give it a fat 10. The story follows several people trying to escape from Iran by going of the hilly border to Turkey and from there to Europe. The story centers around two little children and two men, a relative and a friend. Their goal is to bring the children to Austria, where the parents already are.

Along the way other refugees enter the story. After they reach the border their problems just begin. Now they are unprotected and have to fear the Turkish Police and the Iranian Secret Service. They have to get recognized as a political refugee from the UN as the only way to get to Europe officially. Everyday they stand in line to get this paper, while living in sleazy hotels, waiting, hoping. Desperation creeps into every corner.

Different fate awaits them. I'm not going to tell you anymore but wish you check-it out for yourself. Our news is often about foreigners, refugees, racism but little do we know what it means to leave everything behind and head for a better life. If you want to find out, go and see this film! The actors and the direction is excellent, the whole film is perfectly done.

The only plausible reason this absurd film managed to collect so many awards seems to lie in Europe's intellectual elite and their insatiable appetite for Orientalism.

A joint production between France and Austria, the film follows a group of people fleeing Iraq, attempting to cross into Europe via Turkey.

And yet, the Iran depicted on screen bears no resemblance to the actual Iran, nor does the portrayal of Turkey - despite the fact that almost the entire film was shot there - have any authentic connection to the real country.

The depiction of two ethnic groups, Kurds and Persians, who have lived side by side in Iran for centuries, as if they were incapable of understanding one another; the portrayal of Ankara, the Turkish capital, as though it were some African ghetto; and the way every European reference is inevitably linked to hope and modernity - all this forms nothing short of a parade of nonsense.

Especially so, considering Europe's well-documented enthusiasm for mowing down refugees approaching its borders with gunfire.

One of the rare films that is made only once in a while, a unique combination of human suffering under a dictatorial regime, hope to escape and live in freedom, struggle to remain courageous, meaning of family, desire to find love, but most of all, lack of understanding and desire of the world outside to help those who have managed to escape a cruel regime and their only desire is to live in freedom.

The story evolves around a family of an Iranian political activist, his young wife and their son, two children and two friends who are trying to take them to their parents already in Austria, and an older and younger man.

All these stories follow the same fate of refugees from Iran via the mountains to Ankara, Turkey, where they are waiting for a UN refugee status. While they wait they live at a filthy pension always beware of the Iranian secret police and trying to cling to their hope.

What distinguishes this film from others is the sensitive portrayal of the characters and the range of the things that drive them, wittingly knitted together by a plot that combines the most serious moments with those that make you smile, all time keeping the story believable.