Samira Makhmalbaf Movies
The daughter of famed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira Makhmalbaf has become -- at an astonishingly young age -- one of the world's most lauded directors in her own right. At the age of 18, she became the youngest director ever invited to the Cannes Film Festival for her film The Apple (1998). Two years later, she became the youngest director ever to win the jury prize at Cannes for Blackboards, a feat she repeated in 2003 with At Five in the Afternoon. Makhmalbaf made her movie debut at a very early age, acting in her father's film The Cyclist when she was just seven-years-old. At 14, claiming that her instructors had nothing more to teach her, she quit school and began learning the craft of filmmaking from her father, who established the Makhmalbaf Film House, a sort of family-run film school and production company that has produced films not only by Samira, but her mother Marzieh Meshkini (The Day I Became a Woman), her brother Maysam, and her younger sister Hana, each of whom have made video documentaries about Samira's filmmaking activities. Makhmalbaf's films combine a deep concern for social justice with a poetic style reminiscent of her father's work. Her debut feature, The Apple, was based on the true story of two developmentally disabled girls who were kept cooped up in their tiny Tehran home for the first 12 years of their lives, and used actual family members to play themselves. It was invited to more than 100 film festivals and screened in over 30 countries. Makhmalbaf continued her success with Blackboards, which addresses the condition of Iran's Kurdish population through the adventures of two itinerant teachers. She made history again in 2003 with At Five in the Afternoon, the first film made in post-Taliban Afghanistan. A fixture at film festivals worldwide both as a juror and participant, Makhmalbaf has been both an outspoken political provocateur and a deeply talented filmmaker. ~ Tom Vick, Rovi- 2008
Director Samira Makhmalbaf explores the controversial topic of victimization with this tale of a severely disabled Afghani boy who humiliates and abuses the impoverished boy hired to help him become more mobile. In a remote region of Afghanistan, underprivileged children seek shelter under an elaborate maze of abandoned sewer pipes. Mirvais is one of these children. Though Mirvais is happy to find work carrying around a disabled boy around on his back, he begins to question his duties when his young master attempts to expand his otherwise simple job description. Over time, a sado-masochistic relationship develops between the two boys. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- 2003
Iranian writer/director Samira Makhmalbaf directs At Five in the Afternoon, co-scripted by her father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf (director of Kandahar). In the bombed-out ruins of post-Taliban Kabul, Noqreh (Agheleh Rezaie) lives with her conservative father (Abdolgani Yousefrazi) and her sister-in-law, Leylomah (Marzieh Amiri), in temporary refuge buildings. Although her father insists that she go to the religious school, Noqreh sneaks into a secular school for girls. Her teacher encourages her to run for class president, and she finds support from a refugee poet (Razi Mahebi), who introduces her to the work of Garcia Lorca. Noqreh dreams about becoming president of Afghanistan, and she bases her political ideals on former Pakistani president Benazir Bhutto. At Five in the Afternoon won the Jury Prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
- Starring:
- Agheleh Rezaïe, Abdolgani Yousefrazi, (more)
- 2003
Fourteen-year-old Iranian filmmaker Hana Makhmalbaf directs the digital video documentary The Joy of Madness, a behind-the-scenes look at her sister Samira Makhmalbaf's film At Five in the Afternoon. A child of the Makhmalbaf Film House production company, Hana manages to capture the intense difficulties of casting her sister's film in Afghanistan. While trying to exist in poverty-stricken post-war Kabul, the actors are also afraid of what will happen to them if they appear in such a film. Much of the conflict involves the casting of schoolteacher Agheleh Rezaie to play the lead. The musical score is provided by Mohammad Reza Darvishi. The Joy of Madness was shown at the 2003 Venice Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sima Asef, Agheleh Farahmand, (more)
In the aftermath of the tragedies on September 11, 2001, the French film company Studio Canal called upon a group of filmmakers, representing various regions of the world, to address the scope of the situation in however broad or intimate a context as they saw fit. The one guideline they were given was that no one film could exceed 11 minutes, nine seconds, and one frame. The resulting omnibus film, 11'09"01, showed at festivals around the world the following year and garnered a theatrical release in 2003. Each filmmaker's entry takes a different approach: French director Claude Lelouch tells the tale of a World Trade Center tour guide who is on the verge of a breakup with his deaf girlfriend when the terrorist attacks hit; similarly, Hollywood actor-director Sean Penn chronicles the lonely existence of an old man living not far from the Twin Towers. Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and British social realist filmmaker Ken Loach created the most controversy with their entries, which, respectively, address the points-of-view of a suicide bomber and of a Chilean who recalls the brutal coup funded by the United States in his country on September 11, 1973. Alejandro González Iñárritu's piece is the most abstract, taking images from television on the day of the attacks and cutting them with selected bursts of sound. Samira Makhmalbaf, Danis Tanovic, and Idrissa Ouedraogo all tell small-scale stories of the effects of the attacks on tiny villages in Iran, Serbia, and Burkina Faso, respectively. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi
- 2001
Following worldwide critical acclaim for his 2001 drama Kandahar, Mohsen Makhmalbaf returns to the subject of Afghanistan for a documentary, Afghan Alphabet. The film explores the lot of Afghan children who live as refugees just inside the Iranian border. While children are shown playing or studying on camera, a narrator explains their situation. War, famine, and drought have left many of these children with no education. Even before the Taliban regime, a large majority of Afghans, boys and girls, did not have access to education. But an effort is being made in the refugee camps to provide schooling. As we see the boys engaged in religious study, the filmmaker questions them about the nature of God. They answer, nervously, as they think they are supposed to. Children who do not have proper identification are not allowed to attend classes, so they sit outside the tiny schoolhouse and listen. In the last part of the film, a girls' class is shown. The teacher, a woman, tries to get one girl, Samira, to remove her burqa and wash her face as part of a classroom demonstration. When the girl refuses, citing religious reasons, the teacher tells her that its pointless for her to be in the class, because she cannot participate with the burqa covering her entire face, including her eyes. Samira tearfully leaves the classroom. A classmate follows her out and tries to persuade her to return and participate, but Samira explains that her late father was a mullah, and it would desecrate his memory to show her face to the class. A song plays on the film's soundtrack with the lyrics "If only Afghan girls were born somewhere else." The film was made to benefit the Afgan Children Education Movement. It was shown as part of the 2002 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi
Samira Makmalbaf makes her sophomore feature outing with this bold, elliptical look at the plight of marginalized populations in modern Iran. The film opens with a group of Kurdish teachers lugging blackboards on their backs in the rocky hinterland looking for illiterates to educate. The group splits up in a panic when they are suddenly confronted by a helicopter border patrol. Two pedagogues, Reeboir (Bahman Ghobadi) and Said (Said Mohamadi), camouflage their chalkboards with mud and take separate paths. Reeboir runs into a bevy of semi-feral adolescent boys who look haggard beyond their years; they spent their entire lives hauling (smuggled) goods through harrowing mountain passes. Reeboir tries to convince the lads that they should learn to read, but he is firmly rebuffed. Meanwhile, Said stumbles upon a wizened old man with a urinary problem and an attractive widowed daughter. Said eventually marries the woman, using his blackboard as dowry. Makmalbaf manages to imbue the film with a mood of fear and loss, making the characters' indomitable spirit all the more moving. This film was screened in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
- Starring:
- Bahman Ghobadi
- 1998
This Iranian drama, scripted by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, was directed by his 17-year-old daughter, Samirah Makhmalbaf. His screenplay is based on factual news accounts of two 11-year-old girls who were locked away from the world by their parents until social workers stepped in. Shooting in video and on celluloid, the two Makhmalbafs managed to get the actual family members to portray themselves in this docudrama that follows the two girls, Zahre and Masume, returning home after their release from state custody. The film explores the motivations of the girls' father and their desire to play outside the gates of their home. Shown at the 1998 Fajr Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
- Starring:
- Zahra Naderi, Masume Naderi, (more)
- 1998
Mohsen Makhmalbaf directed this Iranian-French drama set in the small town of Tadjikstan where Khorshid (Tahmineh Normatova), a blind 10-year-old, lives with his mother. Years earlier, his father went to Russia and never came back. Mother and son occupy a rented house by the river, but they are threatened with eviction by a landlord who wants the overdue rent. Khorshid makes daily bus trips to a maker of stringed musical instruments where he works as a tuner. As Khorshid moves about Tadjikstan, the film explores his world -- his fascination with the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the colorful garments worn by women of the area, bread and fruit vendors alongside the river, and the huge marketplace. One day Khoshid gets lost in the large market and is helped by Nadereh (Nadereh Abdelahyeva), a young woman who substitutes flower petals for nail polish and cherries for earrings. Shown at the 1998 Venice Film Festival and the 1998 Montreal Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tahmineh Normatova, Nadereh Abdelahyeva, (more)
