Iranian feature movie ‘No Date, No Signature’ directed by Vahid Jalilvand did not make the cut in the Foreign Language Film category of 2019 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The post Iran’s ‘No Date, No Signature’ left out by 2019 Oscars appeared first on Iran News Daily.

The Tehran-based Afghan brothers Jamshid and Navid Mahmudi are the director and producer of the movie, whose story is set in Tehran.

Starring Iranian actors Mohsen Tanabandeh and Mojtaba Pirzadeh, the film is about Azim, an Afghan refugee who works as a janitor in Tehran. While helping his mother and his brother’s family plan to smuggle themselves into Germany, he feels betrayed by his brother when he abandons their mother. Nonetheless, Azim takes good care of his mother. One day, she ends up hospitalized in critical condition, and the only way to save her is through a kidney transplant. However, it is impossible for a foreigner to get a donor in Iranian society, so Azim tries to donate his kidney, but the doctor has him detained.

“Rona, Azim’s Mother” will have its world premiere today during the 23rd Busan International Film Festival, which is currently underway in the South Korean city.

The Mahmudi brothers’ “Parting”, which was also an Afghan-Iranian joint production about love and migration, was submitted by Afghanistan to the 89th Annual Academy Awards to represent the country in the best foreign language film category at the 2017 Oscars.

The post Afghanistan sends Afghan-Iranian movie “Rona, Azim’s Mother” to Oscars appeared first on Iran News Daily.

Directed and written by Vahid Jalilvand, the movie is about Dr. Nariman, a forensic pathologist who has a car accident with a motorcyclist and injures his 8-year-old son. He offers to take the child to a clinic nearby, but the father refuses his help and money. The next morning, in the hospital where he works, Dr. Nariman finds out that the little boy has been brought for an autopsy after a suspicious death.

The film won Jalilvand the best director award and its star Navid Mohammadzadeh was selected as best actor in the Orizzonti section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival in September 2017.

In a statement published Friday evening, the Farabi Foundation, the organization that selects Iran’s submissions to the Oscars every year, said, “The Academy is a non-governmental institution and belongs to American cineastes.”

“In addition to the American cineastes, the Academy also enjoys filmmakers from Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia, as well as groups of honorable Iranian filmmakers. American cinema, in particular the Academy members, in their attitude of mind, alongside the absolute majority of the U.S. press and media, are the main centers for opposition, criticism and divergence against Trump’s populism and his racist and despotic policies.”

“Iranian cinema as part of the general diplomacy of the country, can use the Oscar competition as an opportunity to reinforce its ties with other nations, to influence public opinion in the world and, as a result, to increase the global pressure on the U.S. government.”

Iranian cinema, boycott on Oscars

Iran has a history of boycotting the Academy Awards to express its opposition to U.S. policies in various periods.

In January 2017, Taraneh Alidoosti, the star of Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-nominated drama “The Salesman”, said that she would boycott the Oscars ceremony in protest of President Donald Trump’s proposed ban on visas to citizens from seven countries, including Iran.

The popular actor’s decision to boycott the Oscars created a wider public expectation that Farhadi should do the same.

A few days later, Farhadi who once had won an Oscar for the best foreign-language film category for his “A Separation” in 2011 announced that he would not attend the Oscars ceremony. However, he did not specifically call his decision a boycott against Trump’s visa ban.

“I neither had the intention to not attend nor did I want to boycott the event as a show of objection, for I know that many in the American film industry and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are opposed to the fanaticism and extremism, which are today taking place more than ever,” he wrote in a statement.

“It now seems that the possibility of this presence is being accompanied by ifs and buts that are in no way acceptable to me even if exceptions were to be made for my trip,” he added.

“The Salesman” won the Oscar for best foreign-language film at the 89th Academy Awards while Iranian-American engineer Anousheh Ansari, who was the first female space tourist, and Firouz Naderi, a former director of NASA’s Solar System Exploration program, represented Farhadi at the Oscars ceremony.

“My absence is out of respect for the people of my country, and those of the other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S.,” Ansari read from a statement from Farhadi at the podium.

In 2012 Iran selected Reza Mirkarimi’s drama “A Cube of Sugar” to represent Iran at the 2013 Oscars. However, the film missed the race after the then culture minister decided to boycott the Academy Awards over the amateur American-made video “Innocence of Muslims”, which was released on the Internet at that time.

“I officially announce that we will avoid next year’s Oscars as a serious response to the intolerable insult to the Prophet of Islam (S),” Hosseini said at the time and added, “Since the insulting film has been made by an American in the United States and no comment has been made about the film by the officials of the Academy Awards, we have decided to boycott the event.”

He also asked all Islamic countries to join Iran in snubbing the 2013 Oscars.

The post Iran sends “No Date” to Oscars despite calls for Academy Awards boycott appeared first on Iran News Daily.

The request was made in a letter sent on Wednesday to Farabi, which has chosen Iran’s submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign-Language Film since 1995.

The union wrote that the Farabi selecting board for choosing Iran’s submission to the Oscars over the past 23 years has also had cinema executives and critics, and added that the fact is in conflict with the Academy’s rules.

Based on the Academy’s rules, the union said that only directors, actors, cinematographers, screenwriters, film editors, composers and sound engineers are allowed to become members of the selection board.

Submissions for the Academy Awards for Best Foreign-Language Film must be announced by 5 p.m. on September 1.

The 91st Academy Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, February 24, 2019.

Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” and “The Salesman” won Iran two Oscars in 2012 and 2017.

The post Iranian House of Cinema seeking right to select Iran’s Oscar submission appeared first on Iran News Daily.

The post Iranian cinematographer talks about Oscar-nominated ‘The Silent Child’ appeared first on Iran News Daily.

The post Iran’s ‘Breath’ fails to make Oscars shortlist appeared first on Iran News Daily.

In her recent article in Variety.com, film critic Alissa Simon has pointed to the powerful cinematic productions in the Middle East which can end up among the final five nominees in the foreign language film category at the 90th Academy Awards.
As she wrote, with last year’s winner, Asghar Farhadi’s ‘The Salesman’, hailing from Iran, Oscar handicappers should be sure to give the Middle Eastern titles close scrutiny this time around.
Among the region’s 11 submissions are several films likely to be highly competitive in the foreign language category including ‘The Insult’, from Lebanon, directed by Ziad Doueiri.
‘The Insult’ is both universal and specific: a trivial contretemps between a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian construction worker escalates into a tense, highly publicized trial that ends up further dividing Lebanon’s Christian and Muslim populations.
As the disputants take their struggle for dignity and justice into the courtroom, their respective attorneys rake through traumatic incidents from their clients’ past and unleash every trick in their repertoire. Doueiri deftly and even-handedly delves into his country’s contentious past while subtly commenting on positive and negative aspects of male pride.
While ‘The Insult’ represents the region’s best bets for an Oscar nomination, there are several dark horse titles that could nab a spot on the shortlist of nine. Chief among them: ‘Wajib’ from Palestine, helmed by Annemarie Jacir. Her latest is a wry dramedy that follows a divorced father and his visiting architect son as they hand-deliver wedding invitations in Nazareth.
With the charismatic, richly nuanced playing of real-life father and son Mohammed and Saleh Bakri as the leads, Jacir’s wise screenplay subtly brings out differences in generational attitudes and contradictions in outlook between those who leave their country and those who remain.
The lineup also includes Afghanistan’s ‘A Letter to the President’, which is a rough-edged feminist drama about a female Kabul police chief, helmed by Roya Sadat, the country’s first distaff director to emerge in the post-Taliban era.
Iraq’s ‘The Dark Wind’ addresses another torn-from-the-headlines subject. Director Hussein Hassan sensitively tells the story of a kidnapped Kurdish woman sold into slavery by the IS. Shot in refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, the film treats explosive subject matter in a quietly authentic, non-exploitive fashion.
And what has Iran mustered to follow up on Farhadi’s win? For the first time, Iran tenders a film from a female helmer: Narges Abyar’s ‘Breath’. It is a touching anti-war drama that follows a poor family during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the first years of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
The 90th Academy Awards ceremony will take place March 4, 2018, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles.  Nine finalists from among the dozens of entries in the foreign language category will be shortlisted late this year, with the final five nominees to be announced early in 2018.

The post Middle East Hopes to Pull Off Another Oscar Win appeared first on Iran News Daily.

Directed by Iranian-Armenian filmmaker Anahid Abad, the film tells the story of Yeva, a young woman who escapes her influential in-laws with her daughter Nareh after her husband’s tragic death, and takes refuge in one of the villages of Karabakh, Armenia.

The film is currently on screen in several Armenian cities.

The 90th Academy Awards ceremony will take place in Los Angeles, California on March 4, 2018.

The post Armenia sends “Yeva” to Oscar race appeared first on Iran News Daily.

A committee of nine cineastes picked the film from a shortlist of 10 films, including “The Midday Event” by Mohammad-Hossein Mahdavian, “Malaria” by Parviz Shahbazi and “Subdued” by Hamid Nematollah on Tuesday.

“Breath” is about four children whose mother had died a few years earlier and their father decides to join the Iranian volunteers on the warfront following Iraq’s attack in September 1980.

The film has been acclaimed in several Iranian and international events.

The 20th Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia awarded Abyar the Golden Wolf for best director. She also won the award for best director for the film at the Vancouver International Women in Film Festival.

Iranian cinema has so far won the Oscar for best foreign-language film two times. “The Salesman” and “A Separation”, both by Asghar Farhadi, who won the prestigious award in 2017 and 2012. Majid Majidi’s “Children of Heaven” also received a nomination at the Oscars in 1998.

The 90th Academy Awards ceremony will take place in Los Angeles, California on March 4, 2018.

The post Anti-war drama “Breath” to represent Iran at Oscars appeared first on Iran News Daily.

Directors Sirus Alvand, Mohammad Bozorgnia, Kamal Tabrizi and Rasul Sadr-Ameli, actor Reza Kianian and musician Majid Entezami are among the members of the committee selected by Iran’s Farabi Cinema Foundation.

The shortlist includes Mohammad-Hossein Mahdavian’s acclaimed political drama “The Midday Event”, which was crowned best film at the 35th Fajr Film Festival.

“The Villa Tenants” by Monir Qeidi, “Twenty-One Days Later” by Mohammadreza Kheradmandan and “Subdued” by Hamid Nematollah are among the films. These movies also will represent Iranian cinema at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA)

The shortlist also includes “Red Nail Polish” by Seyyed Jamal Seyyed-Hatami, “My Brother Khosrow” by Ehsan Biglari and “A House on 41st Street” by Hamidreza Qorbani.

Parviz Shahbazi’s “Malaria”, the winner of the grand prix for best film of the 32nd Warsaw Film Festival, is also on the list.

“Breath” by Narges Abyar, which has been acclaimed at several international festivals, and “Inversion” by Behnam Behzadi are the other films in the selection.

The 90th Academy Awards ceremony will take place in Los Angeles, California on March 4, 2018.

The deadline for submissions is October 2, and the Academy will announce the accepted eligible films at a later date.

The post Iran appraising ten films to pick submission to Oscars appeared first on Iran News Daily.