Pane e fiore

The Iranian movie Nun va Goldoon (1996) was shown in the U.S. with the title A Moment of Innocence. The film was written and directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

Fact: director Makhmalbaf, as a young revolutionary, stabbed one of the Shah's police officers. Makhmalbaf was trying to take the policeman's gun. He got caught, and served five years in jail.

The rest of this movie is based on the theoretical concept that Makhmalbaf is making a film based on this event. Because the incident took place 20 years earlier, Makhmalbaf and the policeman must find younger actors to play themselves as a young revolutionary and a young policeman. Also, they need to cast the young woman who accompanied Makhmalbaf when he made his attempt.

Mirhadi Tayebi portrayed the policeman. I believe he was, indeed, the real-life policeman. Makhmalbaf plays himself.

However, we never actually see this movie. What we see is a movie about making a movie. It's fascinating. Nothing goes as planned, and we worry about it as much as the actors worry.

I've never seen a film quite like this. It was both entertaining and informative. See the trailer before you watch the film. That explains the moment of innocence.

We saw this movie on the small screen, where it worked very well. The film has a very high IMDb rating of 7.9. Worth that and more.

P.S. A little girl has a wonderful scene when the former policeman comes to her door. We've seen this type of verbal female schoolchild in other Iranian films. I assume they exist in real life, and I hope they're able to do well.

A self-reflexive semi-autobiographical account that finds writer-director Mohsen Makhmalbaf trying to reconstruct a childhood incident from memory, A Moment of Innocence is an attempt by him to make amends with a former policeman who was at the receiving end of this very episode back in their youth.

An interesting dramatisation of the real-life event that cleverly merges past with present and fiction with reality, the film attempts to recreate the said event from the perspective of both the director & the policeman. But it's the new revelations that emerge from the whole re-enactment that makes the journey so fascinating.

Shot in documentary style, the film follows the policeman & director recounting the event and providing background details of their younger selves to the novice actors who are supposed to play them on camera. The boys' hesitation to act out the scenes is evident but it's the final frame that brings home the film's message with clarity.

Overall, A Moment of Innocence is a fusion of art & life that expertly showcases the power of cinema & its ability to heal wounds of the past. Through this docu-fiction, Mohsen Makhmalbaf speaks to the innate decency in all of us and offers an arresting reflection of youth, love, loss, guilt, regret, innocence & forgiveness. Definitely worth a shot.

Makhmalbaf has arguably created one of the MOST interesting films I have seen in my entire life.

Casting young men unexperienced in acting to portray himself and the policemen he stabbed when he was 17, the director separates himself and his young self from the policemen and his; they separately train the actors portraying themselves 20 years earlier during an anti-Shah demonstration.

Culminating in the showdown between the young actors, the truths behind the situation unbeknownst to both director and policemen become evident. An extremely powerful film, and I advise you to stop at nothing to view it.

From what I've seen of Iranian Cinema, it seems to be that it is simultaneously simple and extremely complex. Simple in the way they capture real life moments, or simply cinematography-wise. Things look exactly how they would look in real life, the directors struggle is not to give reality another layer but to show it exactly like it is. Complex because it operates on so many levels. In "A Moment of Innocence", we talk about the meta-comment on cinema and its attempt to recreate reality, how we perceive our memories and how we would prefer real life to be like. The two main characters and their "young" counterparts are very elaborate, we get to know how their beliefs differ, how closely they resemble each other and what their goals become once they start to understand the way others think.

Beautiful imagery that transports us to the streets of Iran and its snowy roads, fantastic music and a brilliant ending that leaves us glued to the screen.

It is true that from a purely technical perspective, the freeze frame at the end of this film is quite revolutionary. A lot of viewers have expressed some positive comments about it. Hence, it would not be an understatement to call it one of the best moments in the history of cinema. However, Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf goes much more beyond this accomplishment as 'A moment of innocence' attempts to recreate an important event of the past in present times for future generations using existential themes and film making process. As a young man, while protesting against Shah's regime, director Mohsen Makhmalbaf had stabbed a police man. Although he chose an autobiographical episode which occurred many years ago, there has been no attempt made by Makhmalbaf to glorify neither violence nor revolutionary ideology. It appears as if everybody has become more compassionate including the young actor chosen to represent Makhmalbaf. This pacifist strategy brings everybody connected to the film to the conclusion that violence is no solution if the world needs to be changed. It is only through love can somebody aspire to change the world.