Product Description

Dramatization of an encounter between a policeman and filmmaker when he was a teenage Islamic militant fighting against the Shah.
Genre: Foreign Film - Other
Rating: NR
Release Date: 26-JUL-2005
Media Type: DVD

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114100 in DVD
• Brand: MAKHMALBAF,MOHSEN
• Released on: 2005-07-19
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Persian
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 75 minutes

Customer Reviews

One of my favorite film experiences ever
This is definitely the best Iranian film I've seen. It collapses fiction and documentary into an absolutely unique, humorous and overwhelmingly moving statement about violent political idealism and its collision with the realities of life and love. In the 70's, the filmmaker was a teenage Islamic militant fighting against the Shah. He stabbed a policeman and was jailed. Years later he became famous director. A man knocked at his front door and said, "I'm the policeman you stabbed. I want to be in one of your films. You owe me." The director said, "Let's make a film about what happened." This film is a reenactment/documentary about the making of that film and it blows me away every time.

"Don't You Want To Save The World?" ~ A Flower, A Loaf Of Bread And A Memory Of Youth
Note: Persian with English subtitles.

Released in '96 director Mohsen Makhmalbaf has created a cinematic masterpiece in this introspective semi-documentary film which provides the audience with a highly personal glimpse into real life events from his past. From the opening sequence of one solitary man walking along the train tracks as the "call to the faithful" echoes from a nearby mosque the film draws its audience into an almost surreal world containing a storyline being told by two individuals from two very different perspectives.

The storyline merges and deviates back and forth between the memory of one particular event from the past that forever effected the course of both their lives. When all is said and done one ultimately learns that while perspectives and accounts may alter with the passing of time actions and events remain unchanged.

Time disappears and one becomes lost in the intelligent dialogue and exotic urban landscape of Tehran to such a degree that when the closing credits suddenly and unexpectedly appear on the screen one feels as though awakening from a dream. And like a dream one is left with much to ponder and dissect in the days that follow.

This is what filmmaking is all about!

Thought-provoking!
Iranian films aren't like your Hollywood blockbusters, with an intricate, action-driven plot. That said, if you're willing to try to get into the mindset of the characters, they have a depth and immediacy that US films simply don't match.
In this movie, there is a film-maker who sees all of life as grist for movies, and a policeman whose entire life was changed by an act of the film-maker many years ago. When we realize that a woman is involved, and that the director had set her up to distract the policeman, while the policeman was falling in love with her, you realize things are not going to be resolved to the satisfaction of everyone... In an American film, you'd have some sort of definite ending, either violent or soppy, but the end of this one is open -- just like life. It seems to be the director's intention to have the viewer work out in his or her own mind what the characters are going to do after the "end."
The first time I saw this one it absolutely blew my mind.
The director, by the way, has two daughters who also make films, and have won awards for them.