FILM

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents the 19th Iranian Film Festival. 

The annual showcase of the best in Iranian cinema returns!

Additional films screen February 3-4 at Rice Cinema.

Schedule of Films:

"Good Bye" (pictured)
Bé omid é didar

Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof
2011, in Farsi with English subtitles
Iran
100 minutes

Showtimes:
Fri, Jan 20 7:00 PM
Sun, Jan 22 5:00 PM

From the director of The White Meadows (a favorite from 2010’s Iranian Film Festival), Good Bye is the story of Noora (Leyla Zareh), a Tehran lawyer in search of a visa to leave the country. Recently disbarred for participating in activist campaigns against the government, Noora is pregnant and alone, her husband exiled because of his role as a political journalist.

But Noora’s problems are compounded by her gender: women are not allowed to drive, cannot get medical procedures or check into a hotel without a male family member’s consent, and cannot take charge of simple transactions, like getting a security deposit back, without being harassed or cheated.

Fed up, she decides to leave the country with the help of an Iranian version of a “coyote.” The title literally translates as “hope to see you again,” and the film’s action mimics director Rasoulof’s situation during the winter of 2010-2011 as he received a one-year prison sentence and twenty-year ban on filmmaking.

This Is Not a Film
In film nist

Directed by Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and Jafar Panahi
2010, in Farsi with English subtitles
Iran
78 minutes

Showtimes:
Sat, Jan 21 7:00 PM
Sun, Jan 29 5:00 PM

“Secretly shot on an iPhone by Mojtaba Mirtahmasb and smuggled into France on a USB key hidden in a cake for a last-minute submission to the Cannes Film Festival, it depicts the sequestered life of famed director Jafar Panahi (The Circle, Offside), whose 2010 arrest sparked an international outcry.

Banned from traveling, giving interviews or making films, Panahi is seen talking to his family and lawyer on the phone, discussing his plight with Mirtahmasb and reflecting on the meaning of the art of filmmaking.”—Freer/Sackler

Mourning
Soog

Directed by Morteza Farshbaf
2011, in Farsi with English subtitles
Iran
85 minutes

Showtimes:
Fri, Jan 27 7:00 PM
Sat, Jan 28 9:00 PM

Real-life husband and wife Kiomars Giti and Sharareh Pasha star as a hearing-impaired couple suddenly left with the responsibility of caring for their nephew. While visiting her sister and brother-in-law, the boy’s mother and father argue in the middle of the night and drive away. The following day, the boy rides with his aunt and uncle searching for his parents.

Director Farshbaf fashions a consistently surprising and blackly comic road trip that "herald[s] the arrival of a major new Iranian talent.”—British Film Institute

Mourning is co-presented by the Global Film Initiative and is part of the Global Lens 2012 film series.

Here Without Me
Inja bedoone man

Directed by Bahram Tavakoli
2011, in Farsi with English subtitles
Iran
100 minutes

Showtimes:
Fri, Jan 27 9:00 PM
Sat, Jan 28 7:00 PM

“In this contemporary adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Glass Menagerie, middle-aged single mother Farideh (Fatemeh Motamed-Aria) works in a food processing plant and moonlights as a telemarketer. Her shy daughter Yalda is of a marriageable age but the brace on her leg complicate the possibility of meeting eligible young men.

Farideh enrolls her daughter in various improvement courses, but Yalda’s intense timidity and physical impediments keep her from attending classes. Her brother Ehsan finds himself stifled at his job in a local warehouse, and spends his free time writing poetry, reading film magazines, and going to the movies. He mostly dreams of becoming an established writer and leaving his family obligations behind.

But Ehsan’s colleague proves to be of great interest to Yalda and her mother as an eligible bachelor, and Farideh suggests her son invite him for dinner.

Fatemeh Motamed-Aria won the Best Actress Prize at the 2011 World Film Festival in Montreal.”—New York Times