The Film Verdict: Iranian Cinema Jan 5,2023

IRANIAN CINEMA

Weekly Critics’ Choice

WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM

NO BEARS

VERDICT: The world premiere of Jafar Panahi’s simple but militantly engrossing ‘No Bears’, which comes to grips with the thin line between art and reality, took place in Venice competition while the director remained in prison in Tehran after his second arrest on July 11.

Deborah Young, September 9, 2022

After making films for years while on conditional release from prison, some of them shot in his own or someone else’s apartment (This Is Not a Film 2011, Closed Curtain 2013), in a moving vehicle (Taxi 2015) and in a remote Iranian village (3 Faces in 2018), director Jafar Panahi returns to village life in a context of heightened drama in No Bears (Khers Nist). Even more directly than in his previous films, he portrays himself as he is a filmmaker hamstrung in his movements by the Iranian authorities, whose heroic (Continues page 2)

Woman, Life, Freedomoriginally a popular Kurdish political slogan – has become the stirring rallying cry of demonstrators across Iran, especially young women who brave the wrath and retribution of the regime to defy oppression and demand their civil rights. The protests set off last September by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for not covering her hair properly, have spread like wildfire throughout the country and show no sign of abating, despite hundreds of

arrests, imprisonment, torture and more deaths.

It is not surprising that film censorship has increased steeply in this period, making it impossible for writers and directors to express themselves openly. Eminent Iranian director Jafar Panahi is back in prison and he’s not alone: more than 100 film workers have been arrested, interrogated and forbidden to work or go abroad. Many have had their passports confiscated. On Jan. 4 actress Taraneh

(Continues page 3)

BEYOND THE WALL

NO BEARS (Continued)

determination not to bow his head and stop shooting is on a par with film characters battling a life-changing handicap or illness. This level of self-referential autobiography leaves little room for the viewer to separate Panahi the man from the character he is playing, so effectively are the lines between reality and fiction blurred.

Adding to the illusion is the very real fact that Panahi is now back in Evin prison, the regime’s leading “hotel” for political prisoners who dare to speak out and question its decrees. He was arrested on July 11 after demanding news from a Tehran court about the fate of two other Iranian directors, Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad, arrested for protesting the deadly collapse of a building in Abadan. Although all this happened after the completion of No Bears, it will be uppermost in the audience’s mind while watching a scene in which the director toys with leaving the country with the aid of some friendly human traffickers. D.P. Amin Jafari’s outdoor night shooting turns this classic scene of temptation on a mountain, in which Panahi is shown a twinkling city of lights spread out in Turkey, into a frightening decision of great consequence.

Like Panahi himself, the director in the movie is forbidden to travel outside Iran. That is why he is camped out in a peasant village close to the Turkish border: he wants to be near his film crew and actors, who are working on the other side. Because he can’t join them, he vicariously directs the drama from his laptop computer tethered to his phone. But adding to the frustration of not being on the set is the whimsical network connection that comes and goes.

WOMEN, LIFE, FREEDOM (Continued)

Alidoosti, the star of Subtraction, was released after 19 days of prison. “Most of those who work in the film industry are following the nation,” said one insider defiantly.

The glorious Fajr International Film Festival, which reached its zenith just a few years ago with its integration of the Iranian Film Market and widespectrum participation, will be held in February, but it is very unclear whether international guests will agree to attend, given the current situation. It is largely being boycotted by Iranian filmmakers.

This is the dramatic context in which Iranian movies are being made and circulated at festivals. The Film Verdict firmly supports the filmmakers who find themselves deprived of their freedom and unable or unwilling to work. In our selection of seven reviews from the last six months, two of the films were shot outside Iran: Ali Abbasi’s bold take on violence against women in the tense serial-killer thriller Holy Spider and Mitra Farahan's See You Friday, Robinson, an eccentric essay-film documenting an online correspondence between veteran Iranian literary icon Ebrahim Golestan and the late Franco-Swiss cinema revolutionary Jean-Luc Godard

WINNERS

The other films are fascinating stories whose subtexts and double meanings lie just under the surface. We open with Jafar Panahi’s No Bears, shot on the border of Iran and Turkey, where a film

SEE YOU FRIDAY, ROBINSON

director (played by Panahi) is trying to direct a film shoot from his laptop computer. Filled with irony and humor, it starkly lays out the fight-or-flight moral decision many Iranian intellectuals are grappling with at this moment. Panahi's antic spirit also haunts Scottish-Iranian director Hassan Nazzer's charming debut feature Winners, the UK's official submission to the Oscars, which was permitted to shoot on location in Iran despite the director's overt, slyly political homages to his banned countrymen. Compare that with Vahid Jalilvand’s Beyond the Wall, a drama of great psychological violence that gives viewers a shattering glimpse into the poverty and despair fueling protest demonstrations nationwide.

If Beyond the Wall is hard to watch because it refuses to cloak its message in metaphor, Houman Seyedi’s World War III owes its powerful impact to a paradoxical story about a poor laborer who gets a chance to improve his lot by playing Hitler in a movie where everything goes wrong. And Mani Haghighi’s Subtraction uses a sinister doubles theme to talk about the violence, frustration and anger permeating Iranian society like a bomb about to explode. Taken together, these films offer a feeling for the diversity, sophistication and foresight of Iranian films in this challenging moment in history.

VERDICT:

BEYOND THE WALL

Deborah Young, September 8, 2022

For many years now, the real news about Iranian society has not been seeping out of the censored news media but arriving

from films like Beyond the Wall (the original title translates as Night, Interior, Wall), a powerful drama that really tears the veil off

police brutality in a ruthless state clinging to power through violence and intimidation. It also describes one of the now-daily protest demonstrations staged by a starving, desperate population. How writer-director Vahid Jalilvand circumvented the evermore-restrictive filmmaking policies is anyone’s guess, but the final CGI shot, in which the camera pulls back from a hand clutching the iron bars on a window to reveal an enormous, monolithic prison, has the punch of poetry and truth.

The shrill tone of many scenes is fully justified by the narrative (loss of a child/loss of eyesight/loss of freedom/loss of mind), but they were jarring even to some festivalgoers at Venice, where the film had its world premiere in competition. Full Review

A shattering drama that courageously portrays Iran as a violent Big Brother police state, Vahid Jalilvand’s third film is a shrill, breath-taking mind-trip driven by between two exceptional actors, Navid Mohammadzadeh and Diana Habibi.

The searing psychological split that is required to live in Iran today is depicted in Subtraction (Tafrigh) when an ordinary couple discovers there exists another couple in Teheran who are their exact doubles – but only physically. Their social class, moral values and personalities are quite at odds, and as they interact with their doppelgangers, a brooding atmosphere of danger grows. Set in a perpetually rain-drenched city, the story is atmospherically photographed like a wet film noir whose paradoxical twists keep veering off towards horror, as evil gains the upper hand. Yet the plot keeps you guessing, and the outcome remains uncertain till the end. Its bow in Toronto’s Platform was followed by an encore at BFI London, with sales to France and Benelux already reported.

Somewhere between a classic what-next thriller and a face-in-the-mirror shiverfest as the clone theme malignly emerges, this intriguing narrative is one of director Mani Haghighi’s most engrossing works. At a time when the exportable big-name Iranian directors have embraced hard-hitting realism tinged with violence and social outrage, this iconoclast Iranian-Canadian writer-director (who

SUBTRACTION

VERDICT: Two of Iran’s biggest actors, Taraneh Alidoosti and Navid Mohammadzadeh, play double roles in Mani Haghighi’s chilling, fast-paced thriller with allegorical overtones about life in contemporary Iran.

Deborah Young, October 20, 2022

studied philosophy at McGill University in Montreal and co-wrote Asghar Farhadi’s breakthrough feature Fireworks Wednesday) has followed his own path. Full Review

Palm Springs Film Awards Kick Off 2023

Festival

combines the brilliance of a Judy Davis with the star power of a Nicole Kidman. Full bio

MICHELLE YEOH

INTERNATIONAL STAR ACTRESS EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE

A24

COLIN FARREL

DESERT PALM ACHIEVEMENT ACTOR THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

VIOLA DAVIS CHAIRMAN’S AWARD THE WOMAN KING TRISTAR PICTURES

Colin Farrell (birthname: Colin James Farrell) is one of the most galvanizing and engaging Irish film actors of his generation, working with many of the major contemporary filmmakers, Full bio

CATE BLANCHETT DESERT PALM ACHIEVEMENT ACTRESS TÁR FOCUS FEATURES

Ranked in 2008 as the greatest female action star in movie history*, Michelle Yeoh is an iconic Asian star with rare international reach in her diverse fan base. Before her, East Asian female movie actors (a bit more rigidly than their male colleagues) tended to be slotted into one particular genre or another. Yeoh broke the mold, Full Bio

AUSTIN BUTLER BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMANCE ELVIS WARNER BROS

Viola Davis is a dramatic actor of the highest rank, a performer of astonishing range and emotional temperament. Capable of powerful expressions of quiet subtlety and galvanizing anger and everything in between she is the only Black U.S. actor to receive an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony (two, in fact), and the first actress of color to receive four Oscar nominations and twice in both acting categories. Full Bio

BRENDAN FRASER SPOTLIGHT ACTOR THE WHALE

A24

Cate Blanchett (birthname: Catherine Elise Blanchett) is in the top ranks of screen actors of her generation, and as a leading figure in the second generation of the wave of Australian cinema she

Spotted by a talent scout at the Orange County Fair, Austin Butler (birthname: Austin Robert Butler) studied acting and began to make an impression in multiple Nickelodeon shows. Full Bio

Brendan Fraser (birthname: Brendan James Fraser) has evolved from a busy movie star in the 1990s and early 2000s to a more seriously considered actor in the 2020s as reflected in universal acclaim for his performance in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale (2022). In between, Fraser endured some difficult passages involving a mix

Bios compiled by Robert Koehler, Screendollars

of personal issues and debilitating injuries and involving a mix of personal issues and debilitating injuries and surgeries stemming from his extensive stunt work in action movies, combining to interrupt his movie career. Full Bio

DANIELLE DEADWYLER RISING STAR

THE HARDER THEY FALL A24

BILL NIGHY IINTERNATIONAL STAR, ACTOR LIVING SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Berlin Announces First Film Selections

Danielle Deadwyler (birthname: Danielle Deadwyler) is a rising star who first gained acclaim for her performance in the revisionist Western, The Harder They Fall (2021). Full Bio

THE FABELMANS

VANGUARD AWARD DIRECTOR STEVEN SPIELBERG. CAST INCLUDES: MICHELLE WILLIAMS, PAUL DANO, SETH ROGEN, GABRIEL LABELLE, & JUDD HIRSCH UNIVERSAL PICTURES & AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT

Bill Nighy (birthname: William Francis Nighy)’s diverse career as an acclaimed actor in the cinema, at the highest level of the British theater, and in both prestige and commercial TV, has made him one of the most identifiable English actors of his generation. Full Bio

SARAH POLLEY DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR WOMEN TALKING UNITED ARTISTS RELEASING

The 73rd Berlinale will include a series of “special” films that elevate cinema as an art form, that reconnect the audience with very beloved characters or people and that explore the dark side of the night. The Berlinale Special Galas are the cherry on top, radiating glitter and glamour. To date, six films have been invited to the 2023 Berlinale Special Berlinale Series will once again offer an exclusive first look at new series productions from around the world. The international coproduction Der Schwarm (The Swarm) – based on the eponymous bestseller by Frank Schätzing – will open on the evening of February 19. In the ZDF series Der Schwarm an international group of scientists do research on mysterious ocean phenomena that become a global threat.

Sarah Polley (birthname: Sarah Ellen Polley) is a unique figure in Canadian cinema who has made a striking evolution from one of the finest young Canadian actors of her generation to an acclaimed filmmaker of narrative and nonfiction features. Full Bio

Berlinale Series will present the first three episodes of the ecothriller directed by Barbara Eder, Luke Watson and Philipp Stölzl, out of competition. The cast includes among others Leonie Benesch, who will also be one of the European Shooting Stars at the Berlinale.

Berlinale takes place Feb 16 – 26.

John Malkovich in Seneca by Robert Schwentke

WINNERS

VERDICT: The UK's official Oscar submission is a sweetly knowing homage to classic cinema, especially the modern masters of Iran.

Stephen Dalton, December 7, 2022

There is a pleasing symmetry in the news that Winners, a sweet little meta-drama about a missing Oscar statuette, has now been submitted for Academy Awards consideration in the real world. The feature debut of British-Iranian writer-director Hassan Nazer, a former refugee long resident in Scotland, this love letter to cinema is a fully Scottish production but was filmed on location in Iran with entirely Farsi dialogue, hence its selection as the UK’s official contender in the Best International Film race. After winning the Audience Award at its festival premiere inEdinburgh, Winners is already a winner. Its gentle feelgood humour, charming young stars and cine-literate narrative should open doors internationally too.

Nazer makes no attempt to conceal his stylistic debt to classic Iranian cinema in Winners. Indeed, he opens with a fond dedication to Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Majid Majidi and Asghar Farhadi. The McGuffin that drives the plot is a shiny Oscar statuette, which has been sent to Iran to honour “our greatest artist,” an unnamed Farhadi-like director who was presumably prevented from attending the Academy Awards by a Trump-style travel ban. After being accidentally left in a Tehran taxi, the statue falls into the hands of a hapless postal worker, who secretly borrows it to show off to his home village, only to mislay it during a bumpy motorcycle ride.

Full Review

HOUMAN SEYEDI

Film clip

Florence’s Middle-East Now! Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Taipei Golden Horse, Thessaloniki, Asian World Film Festival in Los Angeles, Stockholm, Lisbon, Tallinn, the International Film Festival of India, Singapore, Chennai and Hainan Island in China. Its next stops are the Philadelphia Film Society, Ostend, Chicago’s Films from Iran, Belgrade, Luxemburg City, Fribourg, Istanbul and the Paris Festival of Iranian Films. It is being sold world-wide by Iranian Independents and is being released in Portugal, Greece and Taiwan this month.

Houman Seyedi, 42, is a prolific director, scriptwriter, editor and actor in Iranian cinema and theater. He’s a well-known movie actor in Iranian film and TV and has acted in 44 feature and TV films and series, including Asghar Farhadi’s Fireworks Wednesday. He runs one of the most prestigious film schools in Iran where he teaches film acting and has introduced many young actors to Iranian cinema. He directed his debut feature film Africa in 2011 followed by 13, Confessions of My Dangerous Mind, The Sound and the Fury, Sheeple and the TV series The Frog. He has received numerous national and international awards.

View the World War III Trailer

Here is his statement about World War III, selected as the Iranian nomination for Best International Feature Film at the Academy Awards: “Hannah Arendt once said that in dictatorships, everything goes well up until 15 minutes before total collapse. Societies ruled by such totalitarian regimes are the most effective creators of anarchists. I've always wondered for how much longer there can be tyranny and oppression in the world and who the people are who will be crushed by the powerful rulers of such plagued societies. People who will fight tooth and nail to obtain their most basic needs - a house, a job and a family. And everything they end up obtaining is nothing but a facade - decorative and artificial.” Houman Seyedi World War III is offered by Mohammad Atebbai, Iranian Independents.

Bowing in Venice Orizzonti, World War III has been presented all over the world at Hamburg Filmfest,

A company founded by former Farabi Cinema execs Amir and Mohammad Esfandiari and Kamyar Mohsenin, Irimage is promoting three of its top acquisitions.

A Childless Village

MARKET clip

pretended that there is a sole reason for all the misery in heaven and on earth: women. ‘There’s always a woman involved! Cherchez la femme!’ And sometimes they’re right... especially when it turns out the problem is not the women, but the men.”

– Reza Jamal

Killing a Traitor

The Wind that Shakes the Sugar Canes

The second film directed by Reza Jamali, A Childless Village recently won the Critics’ Pick competition in Tallinn and the Best Screenplay award at Red Sea.

Twenty years ago, in a remote village, an old filmmaker named Kazem made a film on the sterility of the women villagers, but in order to protect their dignity, the women stole and burned the footage. Two decades later, the villagers find out that the men are infertile and there is nothing wrong with the women. With the help of his assistant, Kazem tries to record some interviews with the men to unfold the truth. The director states: From the very first moment, right when Eve ate the apple, men have

For his 30th film, master director Masoud Kimiai will have the international premiere in Rotterdam 2023 in the IFFR’s Harbour section.

Student activists and opportunistic thieves clash in the early 1950s during the nationalization of Iranian oil industry, when the entire world stops buying oil from Iran, causing a financial crisis, and Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh appeals directly to the people for support.

A group of university students decides to rob the National Bank of Iran, but so does a gang of banks robbers.

Kimiai has said that his intentions are to “unfold the secrets of a hidden, vital period in Iranian modern history and portray the freedom fighters who have been lost in the labyrinths of history.”

This first feature written and directed by Ebrahim Ashrafpour won the Greek Film Critics Association Award at Olympia 2022. Younes is 11 years old when his father is arrested, after the sugar factory boss accuses him of setting fire to the fields. But the boy finds out that on the night of the incident, his father, as a leading organizer of strikes and protests, was busy at a meeting with the other workers. It is the starting point of Younes’s journey, in which he forgets his love for football and takes on the pressures of his family.

Ashrafpour states: “For years, workers employed by Haft Tappeh Sugarcane Argo-Industry Company in Khuzestan Province have been protesting against an exploitative system which disregards their rights and demands. As symbols of resistance against the injustice and cruelty all over the country, they face constant threats, arrest, imprisonment and job dismissal.”

SEE YOU FRIDAY, ROBINSON

Goya, Beethoven and Shakespeare, all interspersed with deliberately goofy animal clips just to add mischievous ambiguity. Golestan greets these antic puzzles generously, on camera at least, calling Godard “knowingly playful” and likening his linguistic trickery to James Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake. “There is a certain pretentiousness to his work,” he winks.

VERDICT: Two cultural titans, Jean-Luc Godard and Ebrahim Golestan, exchange online messages in director Mitra Farahani's scrappy but sporadically charming documentary.

Stephen Dalton, July 9, 2022

An experimental essay-film from Paris-based Iranian director Mitra Farahani, See You Friday, Robinson documents an extended online conversation between two aging cultural icons, Franco-Swiss nouvelle vague pioneer Jean-Luc Godard and Iranian author and film-maker Ebrahim Golestan. Farahani’s guiding conceit is that these two revolutionary artists should have met in the 1960s, but fatefully they never did, their lives progressing like parallel lines that never intersect. To redress this inexplicable cosmic error, she persuaded both men to engage in a slow-motion long-distance email collaboration, exchanging messages every Friday over a 29-week period in late 2014 and early 2015.

The resulting correspondence is scrappy, whimsical and not hugely revelatory, which may explain why it is only just surfacing in finished feature form seven years later, But there are enough amusing asides and teasing insights here to please indulgent fans of both men. Screening in Karlovy Vary this week, this rarefied cineaste confection is firmly pitched at connoisseur art-house and festival crowds, but the enduring cachet of Godard in particular should generate modest buzz. The film’s biggest beneficiary is arguably Farahani herself, who followed this project by producing Godard’s most recent documentary The Image Book (2018), with which it shares some stylistic similarities. Typically, Godard mostly sends Golestan cryptic collages of text and image, with nods to Matisse and

As ever, Godard remains a stubbornly elusive screen presence. When Golestan sends him some direct questions gently probing his enduring faith in cinema, the slippery Gallic trickster shuts him down with a comically blunt video response. “No offence Ebrahim, but these are the sort of questions the police ask,” he quips, staring into the camera with his best deadpan Buster Keaton frown. A quietly hilarious, revealingly unrevealing moment.

Even so, Godard disciples will learn more about him from Farahani’s film than from most of his rare media appearances over the last 20 years. In extensive video footage, some of it self-filmed, we witness the dishevelled, unshaven auteur in off-duty domestic mode, mooching around his charmingly modest house in Rolle near Lausanne, tidying the kitchen, playing with cats, chomping on cigars, drinking red wine diluted with mineral water, and so on. Even if this humble image is partly staged for the camera, the teasing notion of Godard as reality TV star is an enchanting one.

By striking contrast, Golestan is more of an oldschool man of letters, living a life of quasiartistocratic opulence in a grand 19th century Gothic mansion in the English countryside, his home for the past 40 years. Farahani clearly had more direct access to her fellow Iranian than she had to Godard, and keeps filming Golestan even after the email experiment ends, even including footage of his 99th birthday party last year. Shots of autumnal leaves blowing around the grounds of his house have a sublime, lyrical quality.

But Farahani’s artistic sympathies are obviously closer to Godard, who she adoringly calls “a worrier of history”. At one point, when the French director is hospitalised with heart problems, she begins to fear he may die. It would be like “losing a protector,” she tearfully explains, along with all the beauty that Godard has created. With touching, poetic, grandfatherly wisdom, Golestan reassures her that “beauty never ends, it just changes hands.”

Full Review

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7th ART Independent Film Distribution

The company run by Alireza Shahrokhi has announced several new films for sale.

LIFE & LIFE

Directed by Ali Ghavitan Premiered at Busan

Set during the Covid days, it describes how a teacher from the city who has been teaching remotely decides to seek out three of her students who have not been attending her online

Watch the Life & Life Trailer

classes. On the trip to their village, her 4-year-old Hana inquires about her father who she has never seen. The director made this statement about his film:

“I have always asked myself which of these worlds can be called life?

Somewhere that is too big or somewhere that is too small? The one that is full of noise or the one that is empty of all voices? Does life have a center? Where

are the children are located, and the adults?

And is there place for a tree?”Ali Ghavitan

CURRENTLY IN POST PRODUCTION

GREAT SIN

Directed by Hossein Tehrani

A village drama that begins the day after Khalid’s wedding, when his elder brother Khalil is murdered by his wife Salimah on suspicion of betrayal. It is directed by Hossein Tehrani, who won the Best Film award in Tokyo for his World, Northern Hemisphere.

AT THE END OF THE DAY

Directed by Babak Bahrambeygi

Recounts one day in the lives of three young women whose emotional relationships are constrained by traditional patriarchal society as well as the government. It is the second film directed by Babak Bahrambeygi.

EUFCN

LOCATION AWARD 2022 SELECTION

The Locations Award is the Annual Prize for European Filming Locations

EUFCN member film commissions had the opportunity to submit one location from a Feature Film or a TV series shot in their territory and released between Sept. 11th 2021 and Oct. 3rd 2022.

The Location Award Jury selected the five locations competing for the 2022 edition of the Award. Now it’s time to vote for your favourite filming location! One lucky name will be picked among the voters and will have the chance to travel to the winning location. Voting closes on Jan. 31st , 2023. The winner of the EUFCN Location Award 2022 for Best European Filming Location of the year will be revealed at the European Film Market 2023 in Berlin.

Cast your vote by Jan 31

View the Trailers, Cast your Vote Winner announced at Berlin Film Festival

BRISSAGO ISLANDS (Switzerland)

Ticino Film Commission, Dawn Chorus

STARI GRAD (Croatia) Filming in Croatia, How I Learned to Fly

PORTSOY (Scotland)

Screen Scotland, Peaky Blinders

EUFCN Location Award Selection 2022

(Cont’d)

USA

The move will transform a property that has been largely vacant for more than a decade and Netflix estimates this development will create more than 1,500 permanent production jobs and more than 3,500 construction-related jobs in New Jersey.

Netflix to Develop East Coast Studio

Netflix has been approved to develop an East Coast production facility on the former Fort Monmouth campus in Monmouth County, New Jersey.

Netflix’s plans for a sustainable, integrated film studio campus will be completed in two phases over the course of several years, according to the release. The first phase of the project will include the construction of 12 soundstages that will range in size from 15,000 square feet to 40,000 square feet each with a minimum total buildout of 180,000 square feet and a maximum buildout of 480,000 square feet. Additional and ancillary improvements may include office space, production services buildings, mill space, and studio backlots, among other uses customary to the film industry, with the potential for consumer-facing components, such as retail and consumer experiences.

SCHLOSSHOTEL KRONBERG (Germany) Film Commission Hessen, Spencer

CHILIADOU BEACH (Greece) Hellenic Film Commission, Triangle of Sadness

"We're thrilled to continue and expand our significant investment in New Jersey and North America," said Ted Sarandos, the company's co-CEO and chief content officer. "We believe a Netflix studio can boost the local and state economy with thousands of new jobs and billions in economic output, while sparking a vibrant production ecosystem in New Jersey."

BULGARIA

commitment

UK

The first phase will encompass approximately 330,000 square feet(30,000 square metres) and is scheduled to be up and running for the fourth quarter of 2023.

The complex will feature two soundstages, production support buildings, workshops, a pyro/sfx building, catering facility and admin building plus a 70,000 square feet (6,500 sq m) backlot and a sound recording studio

Guy Ritchie’s TV production of The Gentlemen in London

Subservience to Begin Filming at Nu Boyana Studio This Month

Millennium Media recently announced that Megan Fox and Michele Morrone will star in their sci-fi thriller Subservience. Fox will rejoin her Till Death director, S.K. Dale, with a screenplay written by Will and April Maguire. Production will start filming at the Bulgarian Nu Boyana Studio on January 7th.

With state-of-the-art facilities and two generations of highly qualified industry professionals from Bulgaria and all over the globe, Nu Boyana is one of the most technologically advanced studios in Europe. They offer sound stages, sets, production and post production services, equipment and crews.

The studios opened doors in 1963 as the state owned Cinema Centre In 2006 the US company Nu Image/Millennium Films purchased the place with a

The new Netflix show began shooting in London last before the holidays. Following up Ritchie’s 2019 film of The Gentlemen, the television series will be set in the same world as the film version but introduce a new array of characters led by Theo James and Kaya Scodelario. Ritchie will direct the first two episodes of the series and welcome back long-time collaborators Vinnie Jones and Giancarlo Esposito for star appearances in the show.

Saudi Arabia

The complex will also be near 12 square kilometres of dedicated outdoor shooting locations that showcase the landscape and ancient heritage sites of AlUla.

Located in northwest Saudi Arabia, AlUla is home to two mountain ranges, three volcanoes and the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hegra.

The area is at the heart of the country’s efforts to attract local and international productions to shoot in the region, combined with a cashback rebate of up to 40% for both international and local productions.

USA

Film AlUla Studio in Construction

Saudi Arabia’s Film AlUla, the film agency of the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), has announced the start of construction on the first phase of its ambitious new film and TV studio complex.

AFCI Week 2023 Dates Announced

This gathering of Film Commission members from all over the world will take place March 27 – 30 at the Sofitel Hotel in Beverly Hills. For information

to improve the infrastructure and provide international development.

HOLY SPIDER

Film clip

FARSHAD GOLSEFIDI

VERDICT: Ali Abbasi’s Iranian-set noir, based on a real serial killer of prostitutes, explores the social and religious culture that is often used as an excuse for violence against women.

Deborah Young, December 7, 2022 (Originally reviewed May 22, 2022)

There is something very startling about Ali Abbasi’s enticingly named new feature Holy Spider, the story of an Iranian serial killer who strangles female sex workers to death in the holy city of Mashhad in order, he says, to eliminate corrupt women from society. It’s not as though Iranian cinema is a stranger to violence and bloodshed, and at least in recent years prostitution, drug abuse and soaring poverty have become common topics and backdrops in films (see Saeed Roustaee’s hard-hitting Just 6.5, among many others).

No, the jarring thing about Holy Spider is that all the characters are treated naturalistically, which can never happen in Iranian films thanks to the censorship code. Here, instead, two women who are talking indoors take off their headscarves to converse, a husband and wife have sex, a man and a hooker have sex, and people take their clothes off when necessary, just like they do in Western movies. One sassy prostitute is even vulgar. Applied to an Iranian setting, the effect is nothing short of stunning, and the courageous actors take major career risks to make this realism happen.

All this is possible because Holy Spider is a DanishGerman production with multiple European coproducers and was shot in Jordan by Iranian expat Abbasi, who returns to Cannes in competition after winning the Un Certain Regard prize in 2018 for his gender-bending fable Border Full Review

Nasrine Médard de Chardon’s Paris-based company DreamLab Films has acquired the rights to Seven Orange Blossoms, a first feature which has just been completed. It is directed by the talented cinematographer Farshad Golsefidi, an awardwinning D.P. The main role of a retired professor of literature is played by venerated Iranian film and theater actor Ali Nassirian, a character who abandons reason in the name of love, the only way he has of existing.

In his director’s statement, Golsefidi said: “Both the number seven and orange blossoms are symbolic in Persian culture, Seven has a spiritual significance, while orange blossoms are a symbol of love, purity, and occasionally fertility. The story’s central theme is: how far can one go in the name of love?”

WORLD WAR III

VERDICT: A manual day laborer is selected to play Hitler in a film, but this stroke of “luck” leads to terrible tragedies on the film set in Houman Seyedi’s expertly crafted, realistic/metaphoric tale about authoritarian society.

Deborah Young, December 7, 2022 (Originally reviewed Sept. 7, 2022) Prolific filmmaker and actor Houman Seyedi has been at the cutting edge of new Iranian cinema for the last ten years with ground-breakers like 13, a tale of teenage rebels, and Sheeple, a grungy

actioner about a hoodlum with delusions of grandeur. In World War III (Jang-e Jahari Sevom) his career takes another turn in a searing portrait of poverty in today’s Iran, evolving into a full-fledged metaphor for an unnamed, murderous dictatorship by the end. And since the current state censorship policies have become more stringent than ever, now requiring detailed screenplay approval before a shooting permit is issued, there is indeed a lot of metaphor involved. One has to admire the skill of Seyedi and co-scripters Arian Vazir Daftari and Azad Jafarian in creating an edge-of-seat drama that also packs a big social message, though inevitably some of it gets lost for Western audiences. The winner of Best Film and Best Actor in the Venice Orizzonti section, it should have good chances of some international outreach.

Shakib (Mohsen Tanabandeh) is a poor man who has lost his family, home and roots in fact, his emotional center in an earthquake. He camps out with a friend when he’s not sleeping on a construction site. There is only one bright spot in his harsh existence: his affection for the deaf girl Ladan (Mahsa Hejazi) who works in a brothel. Full Review

ADOLPH ZUKOR (1873 – 1976) HONORED ON 150TH ANNIVESARY

FROM HUNGARY TO HOLLYWOOD AND BACK

he became co-owner of Novelty Fur Company. Throughout the years he invested in various theatres and he eventually began working with famous actors to produce feature films.

In 1913, he produced one of America’s first feature films, “The Prisoner of Zenda” and then later founded Paramount Pictures with two partners.

HUNGARIAN “FATHER OF FEATURE FILM”

Anyone who knows anything about film knows that Paramount Pictures is one of the “Big Six” studios in US filmmaking. But what most don’t know is that Paramount Pictures, one of the world’s first film studios, wouldn’t exist today without the revolutionary ideas of a Hungarian man, Adolph Zukor, its founder.

Zukor has tangible signs of his success in the country he adopted as his new home, such as a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

other important public financing the building of a school and a well - the buildings among the many other things he has done to better his birthplace. Not surprisingly, Zukor’s memory is highly cherished in his hometown, where he has a cult following of people taking pride in the fact that he hails from their town. The city of Mátészalka also has a film theater and a commemorative plaque named after him.

ADOLPH ZUKOR MEMORIAL HOUSE

IN RICSE INAUGURATION

SET FOR JAN 7, 2023

Born on January 7, 1873 in the small town of Ricse in Hungary, Adolph Zukor’s is a real rags-toriches story of the American Dream. At the age of 7, he moved to the nearby city of Mátészalka, where he spent his formative years and finished his studies before emigrating to the U.S. at age 15 with, according to legend, only $25 worth of cash in his pocket.

Zukor first started cleaning, then apprenticing at a furrier. In time

Often called "The Father of the Feature Film in America,” Zukor also received an Honorary Award in 1949 from the Academy Awards for ”his services to the industry over a period of fourty years”.

But the Hungarian-American film pioneer never forgot where he came from. In the 1920’s, he regularly sent care packages and money back to Hungary to those who asked for his help in handwritten letters. He supported the development and urban planning of his town by renovation of a church and several

To further conserve his legacy, the Municipality of Ricse and the Hungarian Hollywood Council will celebrate the 150’s anniversary of Zukor’s birth with the inauguration of the Adolph Zukor Memorial House of Ricse on January 7, 2023 which will be located in the house where Zukor was born. –

Briggita Bokor, Guest Columnist