Director’s A. Farhadi’s film ”A Separation” is morally challenging and powerful drama about modern Iran society, although the themes that are being analyzed in this film are universal and understandable to everyone.

An unhappily married couple want to split up. Simin wants to leave Iran for her daughter’s future but Nader refuses to emigrate because of his old father who has Alzheimer’s. The film starts in court where both of them try to explain situation from their own perspectives. As man and woman sit apart, avoiding looking to each other, we have a feeling that they have already separated. We can’t see the exact figure of a judge, characters talk directly to the camera. Audience becomes a judge and this happens to be the key to the whole film.

One mistake leads to another and terrible mess starts. As in his previous film „About Elly“ Farhadi is interested not in action itself but in consequences it may cause and, most importantly, in reactions and moral dilemmas of people. Characters in the film are separated from each other by sex, age, social class or religious beliefs, yet they all make the same mistake when they try to convince themselves that a small lie is not really a lie. There is no other word to describe acting besides brilliant. Every similarity as well as every single difference is shown as clear as possible, avoiding exaggeration or overacting. Clear structure of the narrative and powerful dialogues create an atmosphere of being right in the middle of what’s going around, feeling the same anxiety and suspense as the characters feel.

Farhadi doesn’t take sides. In this dramatic and psychologically complex film he uses clear and sensitive voice to prove that usually we can’t blame just one or another – everyone might be right, everyone might be wrong.

Monika Gimbutaitė

A shadow on a naked wall, a mysterious key hidden in a mouth, a kitchen knife on a pillow, a monk (or a death?) with a mirror instead of a face, a bunch of wild flowers left on a lonely road, a dead woman lost in a rope of seaweeds…

These images are from the first work of Maya Deren’s “Meshes of the afternoon” which is considered an avant-garde classic. Film shows a woman’s dream full of symbols and surreal elements. It concentrates on a vertical editing, distinct camera angles, repeated sequences of the same motifs, bright details, deep sense of aesthetics, poetry and creativity. In general, it makes a strong impression of a unforgettable cinematic illusion.

P.s. Everything looks even more surreal when you know that Maya (the name of director) literally means an “illiusion”.

by Edvinas Grin

Director Fatima Geza Abdollahyan documentary ”Kick in Iran” is about the first Iranian woman who qualified in Olympic Games. It was important event not just for Taekwondo fighter Sara and her coach but for all women in Iran who want equal rights and freedom in their country.

A viewer has an opportunity to watch physical and moral preparation for the Olympics. Two main characters – a fighter and her “master” – are very different from each other, although they both have to deal with a lot of pressure from society, where professional sport for a woman is considered a sin. In spite of the fact that the story is very interesting, especially with political context, “Kick in Iran” lacks action and variety of emotions. Every person who is preparing for something important in life has ups and downs, while in this film we can see only Sara’s efforts to persuade herself. We can’t deny the importance of Sara’s achievement, yet the film about this strong and beautiful woman is not as powerful.

Monika Gimbutaitė

Le Havre, the new film from Aki Kaurismäki (The Man Without a Past), takes us into eponymous French city where Marcel Marx, a shoe polisher, tries to save an illegal boy emigrant. The film mixes up different culture stereotypes together (the directer is from Finland). The wine and the baguette are spiced by rock music tradition and are in contact with the left-wing culture references presented not only in the stage design (red flowers, red cloths, red details…) but even in the name of the characters (Marx with his dog Laika). The culture contrasts penetrate all the film and Marx has then his own shoes still dirty and needs someone else to do them up. His job is close to the people but his work is not really welcome in society. The score reminds the early sound-films melodies and its suggestive melodramatic tunes help us to understand the ordinary simple life of the protagonist. Le Havre is a dramatic comedy where the modern meets the old but the spirit of humanism wins.

by Dominik Dušek

Le Havre
Directed by Aki Kaurismäki
With André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin
Finland | France | Germany 2011, 103‘

You must be a serious person. Someone who’s looking at his watch even while he skims through these lines. But before you rush off with serious business, ask yourself: do you remember the color of the sky today? People are so in a hurry to get somewhere that not only the sky, but others close to them are left unnoticed.

Dripping Water, created by experimental filmmaker Joyce Wieland in ’96, gives you an opportunity to correct that. It’s a 12 minute movie with stationary camera about dripping water on a sink. The idea was to show audience how annoyed women feel when constantly being in a kitchen. Soundtrack is just that: sound of a dripping water.

During this movie, one falls into a meditative trance and that’s something that happens rarely in cinema. If you are always in a rush – stop for 12 minutes and think about your life in front of dripping water.

The movie starts violently – with the scene where a man and a horse are being smashed with a hammer and then thrown down from the rocky scarp by some mysterious man with a cloak – the threatening shadow of this scene is following during all the movie. Andreu, the main character, is the one who find them. The boy which has been hiding inside the crashed wagon just before his death coughs up the name of the beast from the village horror stories – Pitorliua. But Andreu`s father is suspected to be the mysteriuos killer. The boy can believe that it could be his lovely father`s guilt so he decides to find the answer on his own.

The plot of the film is taking place in post-Civil war Catalonia. The war had destroyed the dreams, plans of people so they are lost in the world of grudge, anger, lies, trying to reach their dreams in a perverted way. Andreu is young, he lives in his own beautiful world, where he still believes the magic stories about the mysterious beasts. While he is searching for an answer about the crime, he finds the mysterious beast in his own cave…

This movie talks not only about kind of philosophical truths – the social problematic isn`t also forgotten. This topical social aspect is homophobia. It happens so that Andreu is aesthetically delighted by some homosexual guy who stays in the mental hospital. The guy is so beautiful that for the boy he looks like an angel. And while our main character is searching for answers about the past, he sees his father in a terrible light – being tragically violent against not normal men. Everything`s mixing up in the boy`s head.

One of the most surprising things in the “Black bread” is the persuasive acting of the children. Although the acting of female actors can look too emotional, especially for the viewers up North. I would say that`s because of the temperament difference.

And to talk about the visual part – the film is pretty realistic, it sufficiently right represents the time. Even tough I would say that the digital graphics used to create the view of the village falls out from the movie`s visual context.

The movie itself is not giving a high impression, not raising so much emotions, although the violent, nasty and psychologically hard things are happening. Some might be angry that this film didn`t let them to drop a tear and some might feel happy that it was let to observe the bends of the plot freely and objectively analyze it.

“Arirang” is the folk song, which is being sung by Koreans when they are mourning, Kim Ki-duk, the director, says and sings the song again and again, with more and more pain in his voice during the movie under the same title. There is no meaning of the word “Arirang”, but in the screen it becomes an abstract metaphor of sorrow.

This documentary movie is Kim Ki-duk`s therapeutic speech with himself – the shot are even edited that it looks like two Kim Ki-duks are sitting in front of each other and talking. His speech is full of self-pity and mourning – he can`t film since 2008 after the accident during the shooting of “The Dream”, when the main actress nearly died. He is still shocked and feels the guilt for what could have happened.

The movie is shot with a home video camera, the only character is the director – it`s totally different from his romantic, mysterious, aesthetic movies. First it looks like the film itself is pretty boring and it may be interesting only for the fans of Kim Ki-duk. But from the other position, strange to see, how and does it happen, when such famous and productive director sinks into such sorrow…

directed by Asghar Farhadi, Iran 2011, 123‘

A separation, the latest Asghar Farhadi‘s film (About Elly, Fireworks Wednesday) and Golden Bear Winner at Berlin International Film Festival, carries us to the temporary Iran. Nader and Simin have totally different opinions about the future and about the conditions their daughter should grow up in. Simin wishes to leave the country but Nader wants to stay. His father is affected by Alzheimer and he can’t abandon him. The wife decides to leave the family so the father looks for a domestic help and hires a pregnant woman to take care of his father. However the situation takes an unpredictable turn: thus we enjoy a complex story focusing on religion and social questions which reminds, by its structure, a crime story. The film ends where it starts : the opening as well as the closing sequence twist about the daughter Termeh.

The story begins in the middle of the separation of the couple but the separation it’s mostly the cadre of the narration. This picture speaks more about the family complication in the Muslim (Persian) contemporary society than about a separation itself. It shows the cultural context in connection with the family, with the relationships and with the the religion. A separation is about the people identity and about the crossing the borders inside us. Is the false statement in the name of Koran worst than the false statement in the name of one‘s own family?

Asghar Farhadi serves up stirring story full of turnovers where one dialogue follow another one. Almost all the scenes are captured by hand-held camera, the cinematography is alive exactly as the story is. On one side the film is overloaded by the image instability, on the other side it allows to enjoy a few stationary moments where the viewer can approach the characters on the screen and share their emotions. Anyway, during a first projection the script won‘t allow the viewer to follow anything else than the story itself. It’s necessary to see the film more than once to enjoy the whole cinematic work behind the film but the question is, is the fully decoding of film work really necessary? This fresh approach to the film matter reflects the Iran film production of nowadays, which is considered like a most progressive and interesting film production of this days and where every film is different to the other one.