Retrospectives

Mohsen Makhmalbaf

  • A Moment for Innocence

    A Moment for Innocence (Nun va goldun)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf receives a visit by one of the participants in the casting for Salaam Cinema. It is the police officer who Makhmalbaf attacked during the Shah’s regime, who wants to become an actor. Makhmalbaf decides something different: the man will become a director. Each of them will direct a young man who is to represent the two men in the reconstruction of the attack, which occurred twenty years ago. Makhmalbaf’s accomplice in the attack, a young woman, approached the police officer day after day to ask him a question, and one day Makhmalbaf accompanied her and attacked him with a knife hidden under a loaf of bread, in order to steal the officer’s pistol. But the policeman had fallen in love with the young woman who asked him something every day and he had prepared a flowerpot for her.

    Iran / France. 1996. 35 mm. Color. 78´

    Ver ficha técnica
  • Gabbeh

    Gabbeh (Gabbeh)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf


    Like a gabbeh carpet woven by the nomadic shepherds of the Qashqa’i tribe, the story develops as the coloured threads of the past and the present are intertwined. A young woman, named Gabbeh, appears while an old married couple is discussing who will go to the river to wash a carpet with the figure of a couple galloping away on horseback. The figure is the story of the young woman and her lover, which she tells the old man and woman: she tells how he follows her tribe from a distance, how a series of circumstances postpone their union until she decides to run off with him. What happens on the riverbank, with Gabbeh and the old people, will influence the story that she is telling. Gabbeh is the young woman, the old lady and the carpet.

    Iran / France. 1996. 35 mm. Color. 72´

    Ver ficha técnica
  • Kandahar

    Kandahar (Safar-e Kandehar)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf


    Nafas, a young Afghan journalist returns to her country in 1999 from Canada, where she has been living since the Taliban victory. She enters the country from Iran. She must cross the country by foot, hiding her body under a burka, to visit her sister, who lost her legs because of a mine, and has informed her that she plans to commit suicide at the final eclipse of the 20th century. During the journey, which she can only make in the company of a man, various characters will help her: a thief, who is a young boy expelled from a madrassah, a man married to four women of different races, a U.S.-born Muslim doctor who stays in the country to try to help people. In the midst of the poverty and segregation, Nafas records a message for her sister on a small tape recorder: reasons to love life.

    Iran / France. 2001. 35 mm. Color. 85´

    Ver ficha técnica
  • Marriage of the Blessed

    Marriage of the Blessed (Arushi-ye khuban)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf


    Haji, a volunteer in the war against Iraq, has returned from the front suffering post-war trauma and is now in a psychiatric hospital. The doctors think that Haji’s marrying Mehri may help him get better. Despite the reluctance shown by her father, a rich merchant who sees only problems in Haji, due to his mental problems and his poverty, the young woman agrees. Haji tries to recover by returning to his job as a photographer and, in the company of his fiancée who is also a photographer, he takes pictures of the abject poverty of the most disadvantaged quarters. But neither the press nor the authorities want to return to the discourse of the disinherited that was popular at the beginning of the Revolution.

    Iran. 1989. 35 mm. B&W / Color. 70´

    Ver ficha técnica
  • Once upon a Time, Cinema

    Once upon a Time, Cinema (Ruzi Ruzegari Cinema / Naseroddin Shah, Actor-e Cinema)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf


    The Shah, with his huge harem and the father of countless children, is a staunch enemy of cinema and a censor himself, and yet he falls in love with the leading female character of the first Iranian film with sound, The Lor Girl. She steps out of the film and runs around the palace playing her role as the chased-after heroine, while the king forgets his family and his kingdom, crazy about cinema.

    Iran. 1992. 35 mm. B&W / Color. 92’

    Ver ficha técnica
  • Salaam Cinema

    Salaam Cinema (Salaam Cinema)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf


    Hundreds of people crowd around the doors of a studio to take part in the casting session for Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s next film. What they do not know is that the film will be made with the material filmed during the casting itself, and that the people chosen to act will have by that point already finished their performances. The resulting film contains fragments of personal stories, expressions of life hopes, and even some moments of comedy. But the most important things it does are: to establish communication between a director and the audience, based upon what the latter believes cinema is, and, using cinema and its functions (all summed up in the roles of the actors and the director) to examine the roles and attitudes found in the social segments underlying authoritarianism.

    Iran. 1995. 35 mm. Color. 89´

    Ver ficha técnica
  • Sex and Philosophy

    Sex and Philosophy (Sex va falsafeh)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf


    On the day he turns forty years old, a man arranges to meet, in an empty room of the dance school where he teaches, the four women who have been his lovers. The idea is to go over with them the relationships that always ended up fading away, that always led to loneliness and in which he always timed the rare moments in which he felt true love.

    Iran / France / Tadjikistan. 2005. 35 mm. Color. 102´

    Ver ficha técnica
  • The Peddler

    The Peddler (Dastforush)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf


    The Peddler is divided into three parts:
    “The Happy Child” is centred around a couple which exists in the most absolute misery and has several children with deformations due to malnutrition. Out of desperation, a mother decides to abandon her newborn daughter, hoping someone receives her who can offer her a better life.
    “Birth of an Old Woman” portrays the life of a young man suffering a mental disorder or handicap who must see to the chores of the house and the care of his old mother, who is disabled.
    In “The Peddler”, a peddler who witnessed the murder of a friend is driven to the hideout of the mafia chief, who supplies the black market and sells drugs.

    Iran. 1986. 35 mm. Color. 90´

    Ver ficha técnica
  • The scream of the ants

    The scream of the ants (Faryad-e morchegan)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf

    A believer is in love with an atheist. The two decide to marry and spend their honeymoon in India. Their adventure begins. In this unusual Indian road-movie, the protagonists engage in dialogues and reveal ideas that are typical of Westerners who visit India in search of answers for their existential or spiritual questions. The couple travels and wanders around searching for truth. Their often provocative words contrast with the simplicity and the acceptance of life shown by the locals with whom they come into contact. In this film fictional elements blend with the real life of the country and the performance of the nonactors, and the fictional story itself seems to be less important than the setting.

    India / Iran / France. 2006. 35 mm. Color. 91´

    Ver ficha técnica
  • The Silence

    The Silence (Sokut)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf


    Korshid is a blind boy whose excellent ear makes him especially talented for his work as a tuner of traditional instruments. But at the same time, his love for music and well-recited poetry, songs, beautiful sounds and lovely voices lead him to stay on the bus past the right stop, so his boss ends up firing him. He and his mother needed that money to pay the raise in the rent, and the owner of the house threatens to evict them.

    Iran / France. 1998. 35 mm. Color. 74’

    Ver ficha técnica
  • Time of Love

    Time of Love (Nobat-e asheqi)

    Mohsen Makhmalbaf


    Using the story of a woman named Gazal, her husband and her lover, three successive versions of the same event are explored, but with several
    variations. All of these are narrated by an old man who eavesdrops on the conversations of the woman and her lover, condemning the husband for
    his jealousy. This last, whether blonde or dark-haired, according to the version of the events, will be judged and will choose his own death.

    Iran /Turkey. 1990. 35 mm. Color. 70´

    Ver ficha técnica