The reason that this is Germany's submission for best international film and not Iran's is that the director, Mohammad Rasoulof, is a fugitive Iranian director and dissident wanted by the police in his own country, where he has received a long prison sentence and flogging. It is one of the five films nominated in that catagory for the 2025 Academy Award.
The movie begins as what my kids would call a downbeat political and domestic drama in the familiar style of Iranian cinema, and then progressively escalates to something extravagantly crazy and traumatized.
Iman is an ambitious lawyer who has just been promoted to state investigator – one step short of being a full judge in the revolutionary court. He gets a handsome pay raise and better accommodation for his family: which consists of his wife and two student-age daughters. But the promotion almost immediately brings disappointment and tension: Iman, a judicious man, is stunned to discover that he is expected to rubber-stamp death-penalty judgments without reading the evidence. He is told that he must now be secretive with friends and family who could be threatened and doxed by criminal elements as a way of pressuring him. There are a series of unfortunate events that co-occur in the midst of the widespread protests in 2022 (which are shown in the movie with actual footage taken at the time) and the situation quickly deteriorates fpr Iman's family.
No comments:
Post a Comment