Jahangir Kosari Movies

Two teenagers find out the hard way that love does not always conquer all in this drama from Iran. Mahi (Baran Kosari) is a bright and hard-working young woman who lives with her family in a rural community. Mahi's parents are refugees who want her to make the most of her talents and get the education that was denied them when they were young. However, all Mahi's plans change when she meets Heiran (Mehrdad Sedighian), a kind and handsome Afghan immigrant who came to Iran as a student after the death of his parents. Mahi and Heiran fall deeply in love, and when her folks object to the relationship, they run away to Tehran and are soon wed. However, while Mahi and Heiran may care for one another, they learn too late that they're not ready for the responsibilities of adult life, and when Heiran has to drop out of school, his prospects become even dimmer as an illegal alien. Heiran was the first dramatic feature from director Shalizeh Arefpour, who had previously distinguished herself in documentaries. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A railroad worker of limited educational background undertakes a solemn journey of self-discovery in Iranian director Maziar Miri's poignant psychological drama Gradually. . .. Mohammad-Reza Foroutan stars as Mahmoud, a husband and father whose young wife, Pari (Niloofar Khoshkholgh), struggles with severe emotional problems. One workday, Mahmoud, whose job places him scores of miles from his family, receives the despairing news that Pari has vanished from home for more than a week, left their little daughter with her parents, and absconded with the downpayment on their house. Determined to relocate Pari, Mahmoud sets out to search for her, cross-country. Though he harbors a seemingly depthless capacity for love and compassion, he finds his ambitions and devotion to Pari directly challenged by the narrow-mindedness, suffocating judgment, and bigotry of everyone who learns of his plight, and he even resorts to incorrectly identifying a corpse at the local mortuary as Pari in order to rid himself of the stigmas that he carries as an "abandoned husband." In the end, Mahmoud must ultimately learn to listen to his own heart and disregard the social prejudices that surround him. The history of Gradually. . . is a bit rocky: circa 2005, director Miri reportedly emerged with an earlier version of the picture to devastating reviews that castigated the lack of narrative clarity; the director then reedited the work, submitted it to the Fajr film festival, and garnered one of the top prizes in the international competition. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Dreams fade as bombs fall in directing duo Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Mohsen Abdolvahab's tale of a mother whose hopes for a bright future for her two children are forever dashed by the horrors of war. The year is 1988, and Iraqi bombs are laying waste to Tehran. In the Iranian countryside, concerned mother Gilaneh (Fatemeh Motamed Arya) watches helplessly as her son Ismaeel (Bahram Radan) marches off to war and her pregnant daughter, Maygol (Baran Kosari), vows to travel to the war-torn Iranian capitol to search for her husband, who has just abandoned his post. As the United States attacks Baghdad on the same date 15 years later, the weary mother lovingly tends to her ravaged son's lingering war wounds despite a local doctor's repeated pleas to move Ismaeel to a veteran's hospital. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Amangol (Altinay Ghelich Taghani) is sent away to take on a weaving job to raise money for her sick mother. Sporting a shaved head and boyish clothing, she soon finds herself the servant of a cruel and unjust master who virtually imprisons her with her fellow weavers. She enters into a friendship with Belgheis, a desperate woman who has lost her entire immediate family in an earthquake. With no one else to turn to, Belgheis fashions Amangol as her savior, with unfortunate results. Shown at the 2000 Montreal Film Festival, Daughters of the Sea exposes the horrible conditions of female servitude in Iran. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi

Nargess is a gloriously beautiful girl from a very poor family. Such is her allure that Adel, a young thief, already hardened to his profession, attempts to create an honest life for himself so that he can be with her. None of this amuses his current lover and criminal compatriot Afagh, whose beauty is mostly a thing of the past. When he finds the straight life too difficult, the temptation to pull off one final really big robbery proves too great for Adel. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi