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Accordion (PM)
Iran / 2010 / Colour / 7 min / Dir.: Jafar Panahi
Cast : Khadije Bahrami, Kambiz Bahrami
“The Accordion -- produced by ART for The World and shot in Tehran -- focuses on two young street musicians who play the accordion and the tablas in order to earn their living. One day, while they are playing next to a mosque, their accordion is taken away from them due to an accident. This brief and forceful tale, dealing with the theme of non-violence, portrays the Iranian director's entire artistic world and is a metaphor for the new generations who, led by understanding, prefer solidarity over conflicts... The Accordion is part of our collective film production THEN AND NOW Beyond Borders and Differences. The project -- based on the article 18 of the UDHR ‘Everybody has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion’ -- aims to showcase shared beliefs and peaceful coexistence among the world major religions. Initiated by UN's Alliance of Civilizations and under the patronage of the Council of Europe, the long feature will bring together approx. 15 short-movies by renowned filmmakers and will be presented at the Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, in early March 2011.” -- ART for The World“I am a director who pays attention to the social [aspect of life] and what happens around me…. The Accordion reflects my own emotions in the face of events and the way in which I observe reality.” -- Jafar Panahi

AYNEH (MIRROR, THE) (non)
Iran / 1997 / Colour / 80 min / Dir.: Jafar Panahi
Cast : Mina Mohammadkhani, Naser Omuni, Kazem Mojdehi, M. Shirzad, T. Samadpour
A girl in traditional female clothing, and her arm in plaster, comes out of school one day and doesn't find her mother meeting her. She decides to travel home her self though she doesn't know her address and remembers the road only visually. The film begins as a little girl accidentally left at school at the end of the day is forced to find her own way home despite not knowing her address. Then, abruptly, it becomes a documentary -- as the child actress decides that, like the character she was playing, she needs to go home immediately. The set is plunged into chaos as the filmmakers and actors struggle to navigate the city streets of modern Iran. “The portrait of modern Tehran that we observe as we follow her on her journey has a remarkably neorealist feel; it's something like the unvarnished images of postwar Rome that can be found in Rossellini's classic Open City. It seems a candid snapshot of a city in action -- as seen through a child's eyes -- filled with strangers both indifferent and helpful, people and traffic whirring to and fro, sounds of a soccer match broadcast in the streets for all to hear, an old woman on a bus complaining about the ingratitude of the younger generation, rules regarding male and female behavior, and so on. But after about 40 minutes, just as boredom with this naturalistic cityscape threatens to set in, the film takes a startling shift...” -- Marjorie Baumgarten (Austin Chronicle)

BADKONAKE SEFID (WHITE BALLOON, THE) (non)
Iran / 1995 / Colour / 85 min / Dir.: Jafar Panahi
Cast : Aida Mohammadkhani, Mohsen Kafili, Feresteh Sadr Orafai, Anna Borkowska
Jafar Panahi's debut feature tells the story of Razieh, a seven-year-old girl intent on buying a new goldfish in time for Tehran's annual New Year's Day festivities (in Iranian culture, the goldfish is a symbol of life). There are goldfish in the family’s pond, but they are skinny; Razieh wants a fat one beacuse a fat fish looks like it’s dancing when it swims. Upon badgering her mother into giving her a 500-toman banknote, Razieh heads off to the marketplace alone; it is her first real experience away from her parents' watchful eyes, and the excitement and wonder she feels is palpable. Told in real time, the film's sensitive portrayal of Razieh's wide-eyed misadventures superbly conveys the impact which an otherwise unremarkable chain of events can indelibly leave upon the life of a child. Her struggle to prove her independence is dramatically undercut when she loses the banknote not once but twice, but her spirit and ingenuity nevertheless remain indefatigable. “I like the scene with the snake charmers... For the first time, Razieh doesn’t listen to adults, who have always forbidden her to see snake charmers... Later she’ll confess: ‘I wanted to see what’s bad for me to see.’ Razieh dares... (My father) did not what me to go to the movies. He loved popular action movies. I had seen him many times at the theatre. So I tried not to catch his eye. He used to tell me: ‘These films are no good for you to see.’ But I wanted to see what wasn’t good for me to see. Today my own son loves popular action movies and only wants to see old Westerns. When I ask him, ‘Why do you watch films that are no good for you?’ he says, as Razieh does: ‘I want to see what’s bad for me to see’.” -- Jafar Panahi

BALANCE, LA (non)
France / 1982 / Colour / 103 min / Dir.: Bob Swaim
Cast : Nathalie Baye, Philippe Léotard, Richard Berry, Maurice Ronet
Nicole is a Parisian streetwalker and Dede is her racketeer boyfriend, on the outs with his mob bosses because of a dispute over Nicole. When a police informant ("balance") is murdered, the cops have to scramble for a replacement. Deciding on Dede, they begin to put a nasty squeeze on him and Nicole. “Bob Swaim, an American-born director working in France, has crafted a superior policier from a blend of ragged realism and romantic archetypes.” -- Dave Kehr (Chicagoreader.com)

DAYEREH (CIRCLE, THE) (non)
Iran / 2000 / Colour / 89 min / Dir.: Jafar Panahi
Cast : Nargess Mamizadeh, Maryam Palvin Almani, Mojgan Faramarzi, Elham Saboktakin, Solmaz Panahi
In a hospital waiting room a woman learns her daughter, Solmaz Gholami, has just given birth. The ultrasound test had prepared the family for a boy. The baby, it turns out, is a girl. The joy the mother anticipated turns to terror for she knows her son-in-law's family will abandon her daughter. The old woman flees as the in-laws arrive. On the crowded streets of Tehran -- a place where women are not permitted to stay out on their own or smoke in public - two women are also on the run. Arezou and Nargess have just been granted temporary leave from prison but they have no plans to return. They manage to scrounge together enough money for the bus trip to Nargess' hometown, but she lacks proper identification, and the police are searching everyone at the station. Meanwhile, their friend Pari has just escaped from prison in order to have an abortion. Threatened with death by her brothers, she flees from her father's house and meets with a former inmate, Elham, who is now married to a doctor and works in a hospital. Despite her connections, Elham is unable to help Pari in her hour of need. Despondent, Pari wanders the streets and chances upon Nayereh, a woman about to abandon her young daughter. Pari tries to stop her, but it is too late. Soon after, Nayareh, falsely accused of prostitution, is taken into custody by the police. As Panahi's narrative shifts dynamically from woman to woman, their stories culminate with tremendous potency, transforming a shared sense of despair and injustice into one kinship, and even hope.

NOTRE HISTOIRE (non)
France / 1984 / Colour / 110 min / Dir.: Bertrand Blier
Cast : Nathalie Baye, Michel Galabru, Gérard Darmon, Alain Delon, Jean-François Stévenin, Vincent Lindon
Robert Avranche, a garage owner who's often in an alcoholic stupor, is on a train thinking that nothing good ever happens to him. A young woman enters the compartment and tells him a story -- about the two of them -- then offers him sex. She leaves at the next station; he follows her and clings. She's Donatienne, languid, bored, sad, sleeping with many men but in love with a one who's indifferent. Robert insists on living with her. She calls his friends to remove him. He's obdurate. Neighbors stare. Is this farce or fairy tale? Robert and Donatienne tell each other stories, writing themselves in and out. Will he sober up; will she smile? Whose story is it, and how might it end?

OFFSIDE (OFFSIDE) (non)
Iran / 2006 / Colour / 96 min / Dir.: Jafar Panahi
Cast : Sima Mobarak-Shahi, Shayesteh Irani, Ayda Sadqi, Golnaz Farmani, Mahnaz Zabihi, Nazanin Sediq-Zadeh
Filmed almost entirely during an actual 2005 Iran-Bahrain match that resulted in Iran's qualification for the 2006 World Cup, several young Iranian girls, barred from attending soccer matches under the laws of the Islamic Republic, attempt to sneak into Tehran's Azadi Stadium by dressing up as boys. When their attempts to blend in with the crowd are easily discovered they are forced to spend the remainder of the game in a holding pen. The girls question the laws that prevent them from sharing a national victory and win sympathy from the soldiers, bound by duty, to watch them.“Like his previous hits THE WHITE BALLOON and THE CIRCLE, Panahi's soccer movie OFFSIDE is blatantly metaphoric and powerfully concrete, deceptively simple and highly sophisticated in its formal intelligence... Part sports-inspirational, part women's prison film, Offside confounds expectations regarding genre as well as gender. Panahi has things both ways—his movie is critical and utopian, cinema verité and political allegory. The battle of the sexes is ultimately subsumed in nationalism but the penitentiary walls cannot hold. The lengthy crowd scenes that end this dodgy, dexterous performance intimate a universal liberation.” -- J. Hoberman (The Village Voice)

PETIT LIEUTENANT, LE (non)
France / 2005 / Colour / 113 min / Dir.: Xavier Beauvois
Cast : Nathalie Baye, Jalil Lespert, Roschdy Zem, Antoine Chappey, Jacques Perrin
When a fresh young police academy graduate from provincial Le Havre volunteers for the high pressure world of the Parisian homicide squad, his schoolteacher wife is reluctant to go with him. He moves into a rooming house that caters to single cops as he embraces his fellow officers as an extended family. He becomes close to an Arab officer and his boss, a very professional but lonely, middle-aged female detective who is also a recovering alcoholic. Routine police procedure gives way to an intensive search among the city's homeless for an undocumented Russian immigrant who may be responsible for a series of violent crimes.

PLOUFFE, LES (non)
Canada / 1981 / Colour / 198 min / Dir.: Gilles Carle
Cast : Émile Genest, Juliette Huot, Denise Filiatrault, Gabriel Arcand, Pierre Curzi, Serge Dupire, Anne Létourneau
The collaboration continues between Éléphant, the Quebec cinema archive, a philanthropic project of Quebecor, and the Montreal World Film Festival. Last year at the Festival, Éléphant presented the restored, HD version of Claude Jutra’s KAMOURASKA. This year it joins in the Festival’s tribute to Gilles Carle with a premiere screening of the dierctor’s version of his 1981 film, restored and digitized in HD. Several versions of the film exist. This one is the 198-minute version that Carle re-edited for the Taormina Festival. This integral, restored version, cloned from the Taormina copy (which had Italian sub-titles) was reconstituted via the internegative of another, 168-minute version, and by borrowing from the 227-minute version presented in 24 theatres across Quebec in 1981, as conserved by the Cinémathèque québécoise. THE PLOUFFE FAMILY was produced by Justine and Denis Héroux. Based on the the legendary TV series of the 1950s that, in turn, was based on the novel Les Plouffe, by Roger Lemelin, the film chronicles the daily life of a working class family in the years following World War II. The family includes patriarch Théophile, a former provincial cycling champion who had settled into life as a plumber, and his wife Joséphine, a naive but kind-hearted mother who doted on her adult children Napoléon, Ovide, Cécile and Guillaume.

TALAYE SORKH (CRIMSON GOLD) (non)
Iran / 2003 / Colour / 97 min / Dir.: Jafar Panahi
Cast : Hossein Emadeddin, Kamyar Sheisi, Azita Rayeji, Shahram Vaziri, Ehsan Amani, Pourang Nakhael
For Hussein, a pizza delivery driver, the imbalance of the social system is thrown in his face wherever he turns. One day when his friend, Ali, shows him the contents of a lost purse, Hussein discovers a receipt of payment and cannot believe the large sum of money someone spent to purchase an expensive necklace. He knows that his pitiful salary will never be enough to afford such luxury. Hussein receives yet another blow when he and Ali are denied entry to an uptown jewelry store because of their appearance. His job allows him a full view of the contrast between rich and poor. He motorbikes every evening to neighborhoods he will never live in, for a closer look at what goes on behind closed doors. But one night, Hussein tastes the luxurious life, before his deep feelings of humiliation push him over the edge.“The gritty urban drama CRIMSON GOLD couldn't look more foreign or feel more familiar. Set in Tehran, this tough, bristling story about a working-class man pushed over the edge vividly brings to mind the great Hollywood social dramas of the 1930s, films that acknowledged it didn't take much for the desperate to cross the line. Poor people and social injustice may have all but disappeared from our movies, but in Iran the tradition of film as a means to express the most essential human struggles — for love, for safety, for dignity — continues unabated.” -- Manohla Dargis (Los Angeles Times)

UNE LIAISON PORNOGRAPHIQUE (non)
France / 1999 / Colour / 100 min / Dir.: Frédéric Fonteyne
Cast : Nathalie Baye, Sergi Lopez
They recount their impressions to the Interviewer. They met through a magazine ad, She and He. They corresponded through the Internet. He responded to her ad seeking someone to fulfil her fantasy for "a pornographic affair". This is their first meeting in a Paris café. He's a little reticent. She wants to know whether or not he's hairy. They retire to a nearby hotel room. The door of the room closes. Unseen, the affair is consummated... They continue to see one another regularly each week. They find they get along well together. Soon she suggests that they try normal sex the next time...