Actualités

With four features under his belt, three of them ambitious and sprawling ensemble pieces, 35-year-old Iranian wunderkind Saeed Roustaee is the kind of director who takes a big swing for the fences with each new film. His 2019 drug thriller, Just 6.5, was like The French Connection meets The Wire in contemporary Iran. His 2022 family epic, Leila’s Brothers — which, like his new film, premiered in competition in Cannes — had hints of both The Godfather and the searing social dramas of Asghar Farhadi, with some of the best acting in any movie that year.

Roustaee attempts another big swing with Mother and Child, a grandiose modern melodrama filled with love, death, heartache, anger, jealousy, vengeance and possible murder. It’s a lot to take in, and not all of it works despite some more great performances, including from regular leading man Payman Maadi (also an early Farhadi regular in About Elly and...

They say that when one door closes, another door opens. This very much applies to Iranian cinema, and the one-in, one-out approach that the country’s government seems to take when imprisoning its filmmakers. Like the recently released Jafar Panahi, Woman and Child director Saeed Roustaee fell afoul of the authorities in 2023 for having the temerity to submit his last film, Leila’s Brothers, to Cannes without making the necessary changes to please the Ministry of Culture. He was sentenced to nine days in jail, but his new film suggests that the experience has by no means dampened the fire in his filmmaking.

Woman and Child arrives in Cannes at the end of a very satisfying festival, and it could well be an awards contender, being a very satisfying female-fronted drama about a middle-aged widow struggling to raise two children in modern-day Tehran. That woman is Mahnaz (Parinaz Izadyar), who works double shifts as a nurse,...

One of the thrills of watching what we once called “foreign” films is discovering a movie from an entirely different culture and realizing just how similar we all are: Our dreams aren’t so different, nor the things that make us laugh or cry. But there’s always the risk of having the opposite experience, bumping up against a story where nothing corresponds and the behavior seems so illogical or inexplicable that we may as well be watching science fiction. Iranian director Saeed Roustaee’s “Woman and Child” strikes me that way, despite the fact it takes place in a modern metropolis and hails from a director with the most Hollywood touch of his compatriots.

Returning to Cannes after being censured for his 2022 film “Leila’s Brothers,” Roustaee seems undeterred by the six-month prison sentence and since-lifted filmmaking ban the regime imposed on him. No surprise, Iranian authorities don’t take...

Indian cinema triumphs at the 23rd Transylvania International Film Festival, which took place June 14-24 in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

First-time director Shuchi Talati won the Transylvania Trophy, the top prize of the International competition, along with its $11,7000 (10,000 euro) bursary for her feature Girls Will Be Girls, a mother-daughter drama that premiered at Sundance earlier this year. The drama follows a young, academically gifted teenager at a strict boarding school in the Himalayas who gets caught up in an emotional love triangle with her mother, as they both compete for the affection of the same boy.

“The story of this film is very rooted in India, but I always hoped that people outside this very specific space and time where the story takes place would resonate with it,” said Talati in a video presented at the Gala ceremony at the Cluj-Napoca’s historic National Theater on Saturday evening. “I...

Indian director Shuchi Talati’s debut feature Girls Will Be Girls was the big winner at this year’s Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) in Cluj, Romania

The coming-of-age story about a teenage girl from a boarding school in the Himalayas won the Transilvania Trophy at the festival’s awards ceremony in Cluj’s historic National Theatre on Saturday evening (June 22).

Girls Will Be Girls previously won the audience award and special jury prize when it premiered in the world dramatic competition at Sundance in January.

Scroll down for full list of winners

In her acceptance speech sent as a video message,...

Indian director Shuchi Talati’s debut feature Girls Will Be Girls was the big winner at this year’s Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF) in Cluj, Romania

The coming-of-age story about a teenage girl from a boarding school in the Himalayas won the Transilvania Trophy at the festival’s awards ceremony in Cluj’s historic National Theatre on Saturday evening (June 22).

Girls Will Be Girls previously won the audience award and special jury prize when it premiered in the world dramatic competition at Sundance in January.

Scroll down for full list of winners

In her acceptance speech sent as a video message,...

While we are mostly quite confident in our moral strength and community, it often only takes intense pressure or a temptation from the outside to veer us from this path, influence us and turn us against one another. In his home country Iran, the duration of the economic and political sanctions, meant as a way to punish the regime for his unwillingness to comply to international policies, have become a burden for its society, according to director Abbas Amini. The image of the slaughterhouse with its hooks, its cold aesthetics and its inherent violence is a fitting metaphor for a time in which people feel an intense economic pressure and have to face unthinkable decisions, making the temptations of the “evil butcher” or rather those who have remained affluent, an attractive option for many. In his new feature “The Slaughterhouse”, a blend of social drama and thriller, Amini seeks to...

Known for her impressive short films The Silence and Gaze, Iranian filmmaker Farnoosh Samadi makes her feature debut with family drama 180 Degree Rule (Khate Farzi). It explores how one seemingly simple decision made by a parent can be drastically life-changing.

Based on a friend of Samadi’s real-life experience, this story set in Tehran follows teacher Sara (Sahar Dolatshahi) who is married to Hamed (Pejman Jamshidi). Their relationship feels strained when we first encounter them, like a union of convenience to care for their young daughter Raha. Sara wants to go to a family wedding in the North, but Hamed is not so keen. He is suddenly called away on a work trip, and forbids his wife from going. Sara makes the decision to go with her daughter anyway, but in secret. The consequences of her actions have a dire effect, with her resorting to secrets and lies upon Hamed’s return.