The Father - Iranian Film By Mujid Mujidi: Events in Hyderabad

REVIEW FOR THE FATHER - IRANIAN...

The toughest person to get to like is your stepfather. Especially when he's a cop out to arrest you. Meet Mehrollah tonite, in this award-winning film.

The Hyderabad Film Club is screening "The Father" on the 3rd of November, as part of the Iranian Film Festival, at Indira Priyadarshini Auditorium, Public Gardens. The film is about a proud 14-year-old boy, Mehrollah, struggling to come to grips with his mother's new husband.

Following the death of his father, Mehrollah leaves his remote inland village and heads for a coastal city, to make enough money to support his mother and sisters. When he returns home after a long time, joyously bearing gifts and money for the family, he is shocked to discover that his mother has married a policeman and have moved to a bigger house.

Mehrollah considers his mother's sudden marriage an insulting implication that he was not man enough to support them. He therefore rejects his stepfather and refuses to enter the new house, preferring instead to live in the old home. His best friend Latif acts as a willing go-between for Mehrollah and his family.

One day Mehrollah becomes terribly ill and Latif takes him to the new home to recover. Once he is better, Mehrollah steals his stepfather's gun and returns to the city to force his former employer to pay all the wages he owes the boy. The stepfather decides to teach the boy a lesson and heads off to arrest him.

They are heading back from the city when the cop's motorcycle breaks down. Now the two adversaries have no choice but to walk across the desert with no food or water to get home. As the two endure their harrowing journey, they cannot help but learn to respect and even like each other.

Majid Majidi was born in Teheran, and at the age of 14, he started acting in amateur theater groups. He then studied at the Institute of Dramatic Art in Teheran. After the Islamic revolution in 1978, his interest in cinema brought him to act in various films, notably "Boycott" (1985) from Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

His debut as a director and screenwriter is marked by "Baduk" (1992), his first feature film, that was presented at the Quinzaine of Cannes and won several awards nationwide. Since then, he has written and directed several films that won worldwide recognition, notably "Children of Heaven" (1997) that won the "Best Picture" at the Montreal International Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards.

His film "The Color of Paradise" (1999) also won the Best Picture award at the Montreal International Film Festival. In the US, it was been selected as one of the best 10 films of 2000 by Time magazine, and also by the Critics Picks of The New York Times among the 10 best films of 2000. This film set a box office record for an Iranian film in the US. His last film "Baran" has won seven major awards at the Teheran International film Festival in February 2001 and the Best Picture award at the 25th Montreal International Film Festival in 2001.

Please contact the Hyderabad Film Club at 2373-0841 for further details.