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eyeRan’s pro-democracy and women’s rights demonstrations have made headlines this year, and Iranian cinema is also bringing us news. The outstanding film is by 38-year-old Panah Panahi, the son of renowned director and activist Jafar Panahi, who was sentenced to six years in prison this year for criticizing the Iranian government.
It’s a kind of road movie, but also part of the modern Iranian cinema tradition of shooting in the privacy of a car, a semi-guerrilla approach that puts the filmmaker out on the streets, avoiding state surveillance. A family is shown traveling a hot, uncomfortable road in a borrowed car from far northwest Iran to the Turkey/Azerbaijan border.
The eldest son is at the wheel, reserved and clearly repressing some kind of emotion. Riding shotgun is her mother, who has fun in the back with her husband, whose broken leg in a plaster cast makes him just as angry as his constant urge to smoke. And next to him is the driver’s awkward eight-year-old kid brother: a beautiful performance by Ryan Sarlak, and his lively dog by his side. The family lies to the little boy about why his older brother is leaving the country: they tell him he is leaving temporarily to get married.
But there is clearly more to it than that, as they are constantly followed and paranoid about using mobile phones – which can be tracked. Big Brother needs to get out of the country, and fast. This can be a permanent parting, a grief that adults are all withholding from a young child. Sadness underlies every moment, and yet there’s a wonderful comic energy and invention: this is a beautiful film.
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