Women seem to be a focal point of the festival, with several films dedicated to telling the stories of ordinary, yet heroic women. Included in the line-up are two works of UCLA philosophy and film graduate, Dariush Mehrjui – ‘Leila’ and ‘Sara’ both focus on women’s role in society and the cruelty they suffer at the hands of the men who claim to love them.
Director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad started her career at the Iranian television corporation before directing her first film ‘Off the limits’ in 1988. Her film ‘The Blue Veiled’ will be screen at the festival and tells the poignant story of an elderly owner of a tomato farm and sauce factory who falls in love with a young woman after the death of his wife. His love affair endangers his relationship with his daughters and in-laws who try to persuade him to abandon the young girl. It is a story of love and the choices we all make to preserve it.
A delinquent youngster refuses to believe that his mother has died and desperately holds on to the imaginary picture he has created of her from newspaper cuttings in Kamai Tabrizi’s ‘Maternal Love’. He tries to convince a social worker that she’s his mother and as a result brings a newfound love and warmth into her house. The boy is quickly disillusioned though when he finds out that she intends to send him back to the reformatory school.
‘The Last Act’, written and directed by Varuzh Karim-Masihi, is a tale of plotting and scheming set in Tehran some time before World War Two. A brother and sister scheme against their sister-in-law who has inherited the family fortune on the basis of a play that was actually written by the brother.
In the weepy ‘To be or not to be’ a young bridegroom gets into a fight at his wedding and a blow to his head leaves him brain dead. The doctor in charge suggests that his family donate his heart to a young girl who is in desperate need of a transplant. The man’s family is deeply upset by this and vents their anger on the doctor.
Can we make pacts with God? That is the question that is asked in Kambuzia Partovi’s ‘The Fish’. Two youngsters are fighting over a goldfish when one relinquishes it in favour of the other whose father is an imprisoned political activist. When the boy takes the fish home, his mother tells him to release it in the holy spring in order to please God. On his return home, he meets his father.
Entrance to the Iranian Film Festival is free and the Cape Town runs finishes on 3 August when it moves on to Pretoria Brooklyn from 11 August to 17 August.