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The National
05-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
The Oscars give a window into the depth of Iranian cinema
Getting an Oscar nomination is quite rare for countries outside the US and Europe. So, it's a testament to the power of Iranian cinema that this year two films from the country were nominated. Mohammad Rasoulof's The Seed of the Sacred Fig competed as one of the best five nominees for Best International Feature Film before losing to I'm Still Here from Brazil. But Iranians were not to go home empty handed. The Oscars for Best Animated Short Film went to In The Shadow of the Cypress by Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi, getting a historic third Oscar for the country after two previous wins by Asghar Farhadi in 2012 and 2017 (Iranian-American filmmaker Rayka Zehtabchi also won an Oscar in 2019 for a short documentary.) The two films were both made in Iran by Iranian filmmakers but with an important distinction. While Sohani and Molayemi live in Iran, and their film was produced by a state-owned artistic institution, Rasoulof has been hounded out of the country and lives in exile in Germany. His film, which was shot clandestinely in Iran, officially represented Germany at the Oscars. In effect, they represent two branches of Iranian cinema: Iran's official and underground cinemas. There is also a third branch, films made outside the country by the Iranian diaspora, such as Holy Spider by Copenhagen-based Ali Abbasi, which was chosen as the Danish entry for the 2023 Oscars and made the shortlist. But just because a film is produced inside the country, or even by state-owned institutions, doesn't mean that it is government propaganda. Far from it, Iranian filmmakers have long made an art out of using the limited freedom of speech available in their country to tell humanistic tales, often with universal themes, which can connect with audiences both at home and abroad. Sohani and Molayemi's film is in this very tradition, depicting the soulful life of an old man and his daughter in a southern coastal Iranian city. The film is without any dialogue, but its sensibility remains unmistakably Iranian, linked to the country's poetic heritage. Its story of a family dealing with traumas of war is both universal and quite suited to Iran, which suffered an eight-year-long war with Iraq in the 1980s. Upon accepting their award, Sohani and Molayemi spoke of the many 'sufferings' of their fellow Iranians and likened their win to a 'miracle'. It indeed felt like one. Not only had they not had the chance to be present in the US to campaign for their film, they got their visa so late that they were able to make it to Los Angeles only a few hours before the ceremony. By the time they drove across LA's traffic to the Dolby Theatre, most nominees were already seated. Their visa difficulties pale next to all that Iranian authorities have done to Rasoulof in recent years. Having been arrested and banned from filmmaking several times, the director stubbornly continued to make his films in secret, still winning awards from top festivals such as Cannes and Berlinale. Last year, after being sentenced to eight years in prison, he finally fled Iran. His The Seed of the Sacred Fig revolves around the story of a few young women during the mass anti-regime protests of 2022-2023. Its bold and politically unapologetic portrayal of the events has impressed audiences around the world. But the government in Tehran has brought down the axe. The film's female lead, Soheila Golestani, has been charged with 'propaganda against the regime and spreading immorality'. She is currently barred from leaving the country, which means she couldn't be at the Oscars or at the Rotterdam Film Festival, where she had been picked to be on the jury. A similar treatment was meted out to Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghadam, directors of My Favorite Cake, another clandestine Iranian film which premiered at Berlinale last year. On Sunday, just as the Oscars got under way, a court in Tehran started trying the two directors as well as four other members of the cast and crew. They are charged with 'producing obscene content and hurting public morale and decency'. This might shock those who got to see the film, which tells the sweet story, a meet-cute, of a man and a woman in their 70s. There is nothing explicit in the film. It doesn't even show a kiss. But just because the female lead has her head uncovered, thus portraying how millions of Iranians actually live, Tehran has treated it harshly. Faced with the Iranian government's repression of filmmakers, the global cinematic community has naturally warmed up to Iran's underground cinema. The Seed of the Sacred Fig and My Favorite Cake have collected awards from festivals around the word, lauded by several critics. Conversely, even many of Iran's own filmmakers didn't take part in the annual state-sanctioned Fajr Film Festival of Tehran last month. But it's unfortunate that this support sometimes also includes disregarding films made legally in Iran. These days, such films can hardly be found on the festival circuit. Even when Leila's Brothers by Saeed Roustayi made it to the Cannes' official competition in 2022, it couldn't find proper distribution in the West. Some have come to taint films made in Iran as somehow associated with the Iranian government. The legendary Farhadi was publicly attacked by Rasoulof in 2021, because one of his actors had played in regime-sanctioned films. Such zealotry would exclude most films made in Iran. It would be unfortunate if this bifurcation, between official and underground cinema, develops into enmity. It is encouraging to see Rasoulof congratulate Sohani and Molayemi after posting a picture with them. He noted that they had travelled 'a long, difficult and turbulent path' to the Oscars. If this touching Oscars' night story shows anything, it is that festivals and audiences abroad would do well to promote both – films legally made and shown inside Iran and those that come out of its burgeoning underground scene. From an artistic point of view, it should also be noted that some of the best traditions of Iranian cinema are lost in the overt on-the-nose didacticism shown in The Seed of the Sacred Fig or some other clandestine films such as Jafar Panahi's 3 Faces. What made filmmakers like Abbas Kiarostami and Asghar Farhadi global cinematic legends was their offering of humane stories that, by their very focus on real lives, stayed away from the state-sanctioned ideologies. An oppositional cinema that forces its politics on the audience deserves applaud for courage but it won't be an artistic step forward.
The National
03-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Animated short film Oscar winners dedicate award to ‘fellow Iranians who are still suffering'
In the Shadow of the Cypress, a short film by Iranian directors Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani, has won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short. The 20-minute animated short follows a retired sea captain who copes with post traumatic stress disorder while caring for his daughter. Other nominees in the category were Beautiful Men, Magic Candies, Wander to Wonder and Yuck!. During their acceptance speech, the filmmakers started by saying that they had arrived in Los Angeles three hours before the ceremony due to a visa issue. 'Believe me or not, three hours ago, our plane landed in LA,' said Molayemi. Both started by apologising for their 'bad English,' saying 'we are not native English speakers, sorry'. They went on to say: 'We dedicate our film and this special award to all those who are still fighting in their inner and outer battles, heroically and nobody knows about that. Especially to our fellow Iranians, who are still suffering.' Sohani said that they didn't know whether they would make it or not until the day before the ceremony when they were granted a last-minute visa. They were unable to participate in other awards campaigns due to difficulties obtaining a visa and the Iranian government's withdrawal of financial support for the film, limiting international travel. In the speech, Molayemi said: 'It's a miracle, and speaking in front of this expectant audience is very hard for us. Yes, if we preserve and remain faithful, miracles will happen.' The pair told Variety magazine in a previous interview that the short film took them six years to finish because it was entirely self-funded through development and production. They also said that they had been under sanctions for years, but things had gotten worse and 'more complicated since President Trump's time in office'. Molayemi and Sohani had initially been funded by the Iranian government to promote their film but said that funding stopped when they two spoke in another interview about the financial challenges of making the film. 'We didn't say anything political, but we talked about the financial challenges we faced because of sanctions and the devaluation of our currency and about how the unreliable internet complicated things and how many useful online platforms are blocked here in Iran,' Sohani said. In the Shadow of the Cypress is the fourth film from Iran to win an Academy Award. Filmmaker Asghar Farhadi won twice in 2012 and 2017 for A Separation and The Salesman. Filmmaker Rayka Zehtabchi won in the Best Documentary (Short Subject) category in 2019 for her film Period. End of Sentence.
Los Angeles Times
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Oscar-nominated animated shorts draw on a wide variety of themes, many involving kids
This year's Oscar-nominated animated shorts tell compact tales about first kisses, sweets and an old-fashioned children's TV show, along with more adult topics such as PTSD and hair transplants. Nicolas Keppens' 'Beautiful Men' uses deadpan humor to poke at a vulnerable side of masculinity: hair loss. Keppens went to Istanbul for work and found himself at a hotel breakfast in the presence of men in Turkey to get hair transplants. 'It was a room full of bald men,' he recalls, and while you might expect boisterous behavior, 'it was totally silent. It was tender and touching, seeing this image we don't usually get of manhood.' He says that the reactions to the film have been fairly gender-specific, with men sighing, 'Yeah, it's not easy losing your hair,' and women 'seeing more of the comedy because they see their husband or boyfriend or whatever in it. If some others see more of the tenderness in it, that's also a good thing.' 'In the Shadow of the Cypress' tells the story of a traumatized sea captain with PTSD and his daughter, whose lives change when they discover a beached whale. Written and directed by Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani, the deceptively simple-looking, wordless film is deeply metaphorical: It springs from Molayemi's prickly relationship with his father and Sohani's father's serious injury during military training. 'We researched a lot about Iranian veterans suffering PTSD, their families, their relationships, and it had a lot of impact on our scenario,' Sohani says. Among the challenges the Iranian filmmakers faced: U.S. sanctions. 'Sanctions and the subsequent economic crisis caused a lot of problems; our currency is shrinking every day,' Molayemi says. Equipment and basic living costs kept rising, and in the end, the film took six years to complete. In the Japanese short 'Magic Candies' (inspired by a Korean kids' book), an isolated young boy buys intriguingly colored hard candies that give him the ability to communicate with a person — or animal or object — opening up his world. 'More than you think, actually, people around you are thinking about you and caring about you,' says producer Takashi Washio through an interpreter. 'When you notice that, it's different.' Director Daisuke Nishio's gorgeous visuals may fool viewers into thinking it's stop-motion, but it's actually meticulously designed and rendered 3D CGI. 'We decided if we just created it by stop-motion, it wouldn't go beyond the original storybook,' Washio says. 'I love every bit of this film, because if you look into every scene and cut, there is a true intention behind it.' The most objectively insane nominee has to be writer-director Nina Gantz's 'Wander to Wonder,' a cockeyed, absurd look at the unusual denizens of an old-fashioned kids' TV show, who have to cope with a real-life disaster. Funny and touching, an Easter egg-loaded cross between Ray Harryhausen and Charlie Kaufman, it manages to generate concern for their plight, their Shakespearean recitations and their gherkins. That may be because Gantz was also dealing with a very serious situation in her own life. 'I went through this experience of grief myself,' she said of the film's evolution. 'With absurd humor, I could tell this story with a little bit of lightness.' The gherkins 'symbolized for me the last thing you have in your cupboards when you run out of everything. It starts from the last gherkin jar, and from there it all goes south.' No matter the outcome on Oscar night, the contest for cutest animated short has been settled: It's French writer-director Loïc Espuche's chronicle of a kid's first kiss, 'Yuck!' Children at a family campsite spy grown-ups and teens kissing, exclaiming their horror (as Espuche noted kids doing at a screening of one of his shorts that featured a kiss, filling him with delight). But when one boy starts to have stirrings toward one of his friends like those they'd watched, his lips turn a glittery hot pink for all to see. 'Red is more adolescent love or adult passion,' says Espuche. 'There is something more naive in the pink with the glittery effect. When I was a kid, I ate candies that sparkled on my tongue. I wanted to re-create this sensation. The kids are so disgusted by people kissing, 'but at the same time, they can't stop talking about it.'
