بدون تاریخ، بدون امضاء ([No Date, No Signature], 2017 Vahid Jalilvand

I wonder, how many wonderful and precious film I miss, because they don't have the right marketing or are shown on obscure platforms. I am very thankful that the Biennale makes it possible to stream films from the Horizons competition in my living. Else I might have missed this one.
This film is about becoming guilty without intent. Kaveh Nariman is working as a coroner. One evening he causes an accident for a family on a motor bike. There is a family with a boy and a girl. Kaveh talks a bit with the boy and tries to figure out, if he has some internal injuries. -- Short time after the boy is dead.
Autopsy reveals that he suffered from botulism, but Kaveh still has a doubt that the accident might have caused his death.
The boy's father has bought stale food - chicken carcasses that else would have been fed to dogs. There is a fight with the seller (which we don't see) and as a consequence the seller first is in coma and eventually ides.
So there is a double dilemma.The coroner causes without guilt an accident and maybe the death of the boy. The father wants the best for the family and still he causes the death of his son.
This is a fascinating film with a strong script and good performances. And the best of all: it doesn't give answers.
8/10

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نِگين Negin (Asghar Hashemi, 2002)

A film about trafficking - from Iran! Doesn't that sound interesting? What a surprise such a film in the library.
The film starts in a more or less everyday setting. Who am I to judge what is an everyday setting in a country like Iran? Neda is working in an office; her boss likes her and they are going to be married. Then she gets a phone call - from a prison. A woman called Azar calls her and asks for a favor, a favor that  maybe even a close family member might not comply. Azar's daughter has disappeared.
We get sort of explanation how Neda came to jail and how she got out again. I am not at all sure, if this is coherent. Iranian viewers will decide. Azar manages to flee from prison and now follow some rhapsodic episodes These episodes seem to reflect some darker sides of life in the Islamic Republic. Do they reflect a darker side of society or what is the purpose.
In the end we see that Azar's daughter - Negin - has been sold to Saudis. Maybe that is the legitimation for Azar to fight like a lioness.
Not great art.but let's be generous: 5/10.

The Cyclist (1996, Mohsen Makhmalbaf - بايسيكلران)

In Kiarostami's masterpiece Close Up, the fake Makhmalbaf mentions this film as an example of the profound sympathy this director has for the poor and the underdogs. So, actually I was determined to like this film, but the real Makhmalbaf makes it really tough for me to feel anything for this movie.
There is the poor refugee from Afghanistan. He tries every means to raise money for his hospitalized wife. One time he tries rather clumsily to commit suicide by placing himself under a bus. Then he becomes he only attraction of an improvised circus. It is claimed that he can bicycle around the square a whole week. Wagers are made if he can it or cannot and also some dark mafia-like politicians try to sabotage his effort. Why these politicians are mingled into this plot,escaped my attention. In he end he wins, but like  another Sisyphus he just circles on.
Makhmalbaf uses  soap opera aesthetics for his film, which makes it almost impossible to watch. He uses also amateur actors, but their acting stays amateurish, never is lifted about the telenovela style. The wife for example tosses about the bed in the hospital and this is supposed to illustrate great pain. This is pain Ed Wood style. One thing is that the acting is minimalist throughout another thing is that the script never lets us enter beyond the poker face of the cyclist. No emotion, no sign of something going on inside the person.
The soundtrack places the movie outside Iran. I have read that this was a device to make the film pass through the censor board. Unfortunately also the music adds to the unbearable sentimentality of this film.
Certainly he tried to achieved something meaningful, but, I am afraid, that his capabilities cannot match his ambitions. I saw before his more recent film Sex and Philosophy. When I saw that, I thought that the absence of censors had emptied him for creative strategies, but now I see that there is not much to fetch here either. Makhmalbaf is just a wannabee poet in cinema.
2/10

The White Balloon ( 1995, Jafar Panahi بادکنک سفيد)

It showed that this was the right selection to view on a New Year's Eve; a film which is a countdown to the New Year. OK, it's the Persian New Year, but nevertheless.
I liked Taxi Tehran so much that I wanted to see more by this director. Taxi Tehran showed an overflow of irony and creativity. These same qualities we find again in his first feature film, but also an immense distress.
The film focuses around little Razieh, who wants to buy a chubby goldfish for the Noorooz celebrations. Now, I didn't know this before, but in Persian culture these fishes are a symbol for life. The skinny fishes at home are not enough for her. Thus Razieh is targeting for the plenitude of life. Her brother is going to help her and he talks their mother into letting her buy a fish, Happily she runs a way with a 500 toman bill. Although this doesn't sound much, it still was a substantial amount of money, as director Jafar Panahi declared in an interview.
Roaming on the street, Razieh becomes interested in the performance of snake charmers. She was told that this was unsuitable for her, but she also wants to know why it is not suitable for her. She manages to get rid of the money and get it back from the snake charmers. On the way to the fish shop she loses the money again. A friendly elderly lady helps her to find the money again, but it is now lost in a cellar duct. Her brother has been looking for her and together they try to acquire the bill again. At this point the tiny plot is overshadowed by a rich collection of supporting actors: a tailor who owns the shop next to the duct, the owner of the closed shop, a soldier who hasn't the money to buy a bus ticket to go home -- and a Hazara boy from Afghanistan, selling balloons. We saw this boy in the beginning when Razieh had disappeared from her mother. Then he had many balloons, now only a few are left.
Together they manage to get the bill out of the duct; the children run happily away, the seller remains with the white balloon, alone.
This film has been called heart-warming and life-confirming. Is it really like that? In Umberto D., one of the most touching dramas of Italian neo-realism, a living being whose life is even more miserable than the life of the eponymous main-character, helps him to return to life. That was solidarity among the outcasts. What do we have here? Selfishness! The two kids may be lower-middle class, and they use the Afghani seller for their purpose. Razieh's brother even thought that taking away things from him was OK, while he still has scruples to steal from a blind chewing-gum seller.
I have been told that the supporting characters were carefully cast from different parts of society: the tailor a Turk, the old lady a Polish refugee from the Gulag, the soldier and the fish seller from other parts. The snake charmers certainly also from abroad. What is the bottom line then? Maybe that a society needs all segments, if it is supposed to work as a society? It's a guess. However, it still seems to me that this film has an unhappy ending.
Busy viewers might think that the plot is moving too slowly. This is not Fast and Furious, but a chance to meet ordinary citizens from Iran. Panahi used only amateur actors and he has a unique talent to evoke the best of their performing abilities. They act naturally and this is quite amazing. Aida Mohammadkhani, the actor of Razieh is awesome: within seconds she changes from close to tears to happiness. It seems a pity that she didn't become a professional actress. The story is told from her perspective. We never see a general view from a grown-up perspective, but always close-ups that might confirm to the height of the girl. Especially in the beginning I sensed a certain impatience - until the film, so to speak, found its direction.
Unfortunately there are also cultural references that I cannot decode. E.g. Razieh once says that her father has two professions, but they don't elaborate on that any further. And there may be other allusions which I simply didn't catch. Likewise the foreign viewer has no chance to hear the different accents used by the characters, but none of these diminished the pleasure it was to see this film.
9,5/10

The Pear Tree (1998) - a poetic film from Iran

So it is 2015 now. Second time I am alone during New Year's Eve. The absence of social engagements makes me independent. As I enjoy my solitary life, it doesn't matter if I write something in my blog while 2015 is only 30 minutes of age - nobody cares anyway.
Another note: I saw The Flower Girl - a a film from North Korea a few days ago. The title song IS a catchy tune and has become one for me. This is kind of irritating, as I want to be water proof against their shitty propaganda.
OK
Now about the Pear Tree. Everybody who has a just a basic interest in movies, has to know that Iran is a country that at least once in a while produces most watchable movies. I have seen some more than watchable movies from the 2000's, but not a movie from the past millennium.

Mahmoud is an intellectual with a writer's block. At the same time a pear tree refuses to fructify - aha, parallelism! The gardener alerts Mahmud, but he he prefers to stay inside. So we have inner life and outer life. Will Mahmud stay in his house - will he go out and confront The Pear Tree? The gardener's talk triggers images from the past of Mahmud. He was in love with 'M'  but she is far away away. She promised to wait until he would become of legal age, so that they could marry. But she goes away and he sees her never again. Mahmud engages in politics, becomes a Marxist, but as Marx said in his theses on Feuerbach, he does not want only to interpret the world differently, he wants to change it.
From childhood dreams Mahmoud jumps into present-day adventures... TBC
At that point I fell asleep. While I was proud to keep myself awake until midnight to greet 2015, I faded out soon after that...
So back to this remarkable work by Dariush Mehrjui. ... Mahmud wants to achieve something before contacting M, but in prison he learns, that she perished in a car accident.
Back in the present tense, he is still busy with his unspecified, but ground-breaking book. Angrilyhe orders that the gtree should be cut, but the gardener supposes that the tree still deserves a second chance. At last Mahmud finds peace and is enjoying the moment between past and future.
Enjoying the moment between past and the future -- could there be a more suitable film for New Year's Eve?
There are very poetic moments, e.g. when Mahmud and M meet for the last time and she tries to dry his tears -- this is a moment of sheer beauty.
However, the transformations stay unclear to me. i don't understand why he changed from a left-wing activist to a present-day intellectual and I don't see what made him at last confront the outer world. This part seems like attached to the film.
The philosophical content of this film is also rather trivial, but this can also be because the male protagonist acts like a woodcut, without any emotion.
On the whole this is still a very watchable film.
6/10.

Artistic department wasn't very busy to make this film attractive.