Five new movies were released on screens across Iran in Aban (started October 23), the second month of autumn in the Iranian calendar.
‘Wednesday, May 9’ by Vahid Jalilvand, ‘The Other Boy’s Dad’ by Yadollah Samadi, ‘Arghavan’ by Omid Bonakdar and Keyvan Alimohamadi, ‘Little Black Fish’ by Majid Esmaili and ‘Lovers Die Standing’ by Shahram Maslakhi, were released on Tuesday, Honaronline reported.
Jalilvand’s debut feature film was Iran’s only representative at the 72nd Venice Film Festival and won the INTERFILM award at the Italian event in September.
The movie is about Jalal, who publishes an unusual advertisement in one of Tehran’s morning papers that he is donating $10,000 to a needy person. The news creates a ruckus and the police take charge of the situation by dispersing the crowd. However, two women do not give up. The movie follows his story and that of the two women.
Niki Karimi, Amir Aqaee and Shahrokh Forutanian and Borzu Arjmand are in the cast.
In his last film ‘The Other Boy’s Dad’, veteran director Samadi has taken the theme from a children’s story book by the same name, written by Parinoush Saniee.
It is about a young man, Shahab, who recollects the memories of his childhood when he starts acting dumb as his father constantly reproaches him for being stupid. Till the time his grandmother discovers his secret. Hossein Yari, Hengameh Qaziani, Soraya Qasemi, Akbar Abdi and Jamshid Mashayekhi play in the film.
The third joint production by Bonakdar and Alimohamadi, ‘Arghavan’ is a drama about a man and a woman who accidentally meet at a book store. The film takes one to the past incidents in their life which affects their present and future. Mahtab Keramati, Mehdi Ahmadi, Shaqayeq Farahani and Azadeh Samadi are in the cast.
The war/drama ‘Little Black Fish’ centers on the northern city of Amol in the early 1980s after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Merila Zarei, Mostafa Zamani and Homayun Ershadi are among the actors and it is Esmaili’s debut directorial experience.
A social melodrama, ‘Lovers Die Standing’ tells the story of Reza, a freelance journalist, who finds clues about Hiwa, an Iraqi soldier, who saved his life years ago during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. To find an answer to the question he has hidden all his life from people around him, he sets for Iraq. Maslakhi’s first feature film has Sorush Sehat, Puria Pursorkh, Laya Zangeneh and Kurdish actor Shwan Atuf in the cast.
Iran cinema had a good season in the first seven months of the year (March 21-October 22) and the trend is expected to continue in the second half.
The historic epic ‘Muhammad, the Messenger of God’ by Majid Majidi, comedies ‘The Whale’ by Saman Moqadam, ‘Iran Burger’ by Masoud Jafari-Jozani, ‘The Guinness’ by Mohsen Tanabandeh and the suspense/thriller ‘Crazy Castle’ by Abolhassan Davoudi , five best sellers this year, have fetched more than $9 million at the box office and drawn over five million people to cinema halls.
