It has been a record year for Iranian cinema,' exulted Mohammed Atebbai, an executive with the Farabi Cinema Foundation, the national promotion and distribution organisation, earlier this year. Atebbai was, of course, speaking more of production levels within the country than with the unfortunate misunderstanding which resulted in the withdrawal of Badkonake sefid (The White Balloon) from the Foreign-Language Oscar race this February a contest which Jafar Panahi's film stood a very good chance of winning.
Wnter 1995/6 saw the filming of a lot of promising works by established and not-so-established film-makers, added the Farabi executive, 'but many films were only finished in time for our national film festival, in March, and that was a little late for Cannes. Otherwise, I think there are quite a few quality films which would have been there.'
Festivals later in the year have benefited from this log-jam, with Montreal, Venice and San Sebastián all able to premiere interesting new films from the 'art-house' side of the recent split which emerged between Iran's quality film-makers and those keen on producing more commercial fare.
Majid Majidi's Pedar is a case in point. Born in Tehran in 1959, Majidi began his career as an actor, then made a number of short films and worked as an assistant to Mohsen Makhmalbaf before directing his first feature, Baduck, in 1992, which was shown in Director's Fortnight in Cannes.
Pedar (translated here as The Father, though the film's working title was The Stepfather) is about 14-year-old Mehrollah, whose father dies and who heads off to a southern port city to find work and support the family.
When he returns home, however, he discovers that his mother has remarried to the local cop, no less and begins a campaign of silent protest against his stepfather, which gradually becomes more dangerous until a stroke of fate forces Mehrollah and his stepfather to come to terms with one another.
Prod co: Centre of Documentary and Experimental Cinema
Dir: Majid Majidi
Guión (Scr): Mehdi Shojai, Majid Majidi
Foto (Ph): Mohsen Zolanvar
Art dir (Prod des): Behzad Kazazi
Mus: Mohammad-Reza Aligholi
Mont (Ed): Hassan Hassandoost
Ints (Cast): Mohammad Kasebi, Parivash Nazarieh, Hassan Sadeghi, Hossein Abedini
Ventas (Sales): Farabi Cinema Foundation
Duración (Running time): 96 mins
Programacion (Screening): 12.00, 22 Sept, Victoria Eugenia; 19.00, 22 Sept, Victoria Eugenia
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