Tag Archives: Persian

The wife of Nasim, an Afghan immigrant in Iran, is gravely ill. He needs money to pay for her care, but his day labor digging wells does not pay enough. A friend connects Nasim to a two-bit promoter who sells tickets to watch Nasim ride a bicycle continuously for a week. The promoter brings in sick and aged spectators, haranguing them to find hope in Nasim’s strength. Aided by his son, who feeds him as he rides, Nasim grinds out the days and shivering nights. Local officials believe this may be a plot and Nasim may be a spy; they try to sabotage him as do those who bet he won’t finish the week. Will desperation alone get Nasim the money? Is any triumph an illusion?

Calamity by four-year old might be another title for this tense, humorous drama. In the story, a four year old boy (Mohammed Aladpoush) is left at home with his baby brother while his mother goes out shopping. She has told him to give the baby his bottle while she is away. However, the boy has a different idea about what he should do, and consumes most of the bottle himself. The hungry baby’s cries arouse the neighbors to try and get into the apartment, but it is locked, and the four-year old can’t (or, more likely, won’t) let them in. Despite a number of near-disasters, the enterprising young boy manages things just well enough (with the occasional help of shouted advice from frantic neighbors) so that serious calamities are avoided.

When Gheisar returns to town, he finds that his sister committed suicide after being raped and her brother was murdered. Although his mother and uncle tried to dissuade him, and despite the deep love for his fiancee, Azam, for Gheisar there is only one way out … revenge.

Negar and Ashkan, two young Iranian songwriters, decide to set up an underground band and look for other musicians to join them, but the authorities keep putting a spanner in the works. Fed up with being hindered from expressing themselves, the two young people try to get documents to leave the country for Europe.

A film comprised of three interconnected vignettes that depict women at three stages of life in Iran. The first part centers on a young girl on her ninth birthday who is told that she can no longer play with the boys she had been playing with only the day before because she is now a woman. Told from the perspective of a 9-year-old girl who does not feel like or know what the word “woman” refers to, we see how devastatingly this affects both the girl and the boy with whom she had been friends. The second part is about a young woman who decides to enter a bicycle race against her husband’s wishes. As first, the husband and then increasing numbers of men from her village ride beside her on horseback to convince her to return home. The race begins to symbolize a freedom that she desperately wants from the limitations that have been placed on her. Finally, the third part shows us an old woman who has come into some money and is now free to do what she wants.

During the Iran-Iraq war, Reza’s wife gives birth, and dies soon afterward. Reza is taken as POW. Shokooh finds Reza’s baby and raises her as her own. Many years later, Reza find’s his daughter again…

Ali and his father go from their poor neighborhood in the outskirts of the city to a hospital so that Ali’s father can be treated for his sickness. However since they have no money, Ali starts to work for Dr. Sameri who deals in blood.

Blind since childhood, Youssef has a devoted wife, loving daughter, and successful university career, but his affliction fills him with secret torment. As if in answer to his prayers, a clinic restores his sight- a miracle that is double-edged. Although this new world of sight and color floods him with ecstacy- the breathtaking images seen through his reawakened eyes include a dazzling vista of snow-blanketed hills, a shower of molten gold sparks in a jewlery foundry, an array of lollipop lights behind a rain-speckled car window- it also plunges him into a labyrinth of confusion and temptations. A pretty student begins to enclipse his previously invisible wife; he silently watches a subway pickpoket, who fixes him with a look of withering complicity. Eager to claim the lost life he feels he is owed but unable to take the next step, Youssef is inflamed with possibility and paralyzed with egoism.

A man contemplates life and compares it to a pear tree in his yard which stops producing fruit.

Mehrollah is a 14-year-old boy who is forced to find a job to support his family after his father dies. He travels to the southern parts of Iran, looking for work. Upon his return to his hometown, he notices certain changes in his family.