Iran, Afghan Actors in 3-Nation Production

The feature film ‘Lina’, a joint production of Iran, Afghanistan and the Netherlands is on the screen in Afghan cinemas from last week.

A 2017 production, the film is in Persian language. It is written and directed by Afghan filmmaker Ramin Rasouli, Mehr News Agency reported.

The family drama centers on Maryam, a young girl, who after some clinical investigation finds out that she was adopted so she decides to find her biological parents. After much searching, she gets a phone number from Afghanistan.

Cast includes famous Iranian actors Homayoun Ershadi, Amir Aghaee as well as the young Afghan actress Hasiba Ebrahimi.

Well-Known Cast

Ershadi, 70, has appeared in Abbas Kiarostami’s Palme d’or winning film ‘Taste of Cherry’ (1997), German filmmaker Marc Forster’s 2007 adaptation of the novel ‘The Kite Runner’ written by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini, and ‘A Most Wanted Man’ (2014) directed by Dutch director Anton Corbijn.

Aghaee, 47, has performed in Vahid Jalilvand’s first and second feature films ‘Wednesday, May 9’ (2015) and ‘No Date, No Signature’ (2017). Both films have won awards at the Venice Film Festival.

Ebrahimi, who plays the lead role in ‘Lina’, was known to the global audience by her first film ‘A Few Cubic Meters of Love’ (2014) which attended several festivals and was selected as the Afghan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards.

Fahim Ebrahimi, Sanaz Eslami, Atieh Ghabisghavi, Mozhgan Kamjoo and Shahab Shadabi are also in the cast.

  Desire to Return

Director Rasouli, 39, was born in Herat, Afghanistan, but grew up in Iran. He was offered a place in Mashhad Youth Cinema Society, in the holy city of Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi Province, in 1993. He made several short films and then moved to the Netherlands. There also he continued making short films. ‘Lina’ is his debut feature film.

“When I migrated to Europe, I felt homesick and missed my home country, Afghanistan. Several times I decided to go back. Through ‘Lina’ I want to show the audience that we can all move back and live there happily,” Rasouli said.