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Autumnal romance blooms in My Favourite Cake, a film about seeking passion in life and being bold enough to act when opportunities arise. The directors are Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, a duo whose previous work, Ballad of a White Cow, pointed to excessive measures in the Iranian legal system. Their latest has a lighter touch but is just as candid about the effect of authoritarian overreach on ordinary lives––a sentiment made all the more apparent when the directors were banned from attending the Berlinale premiere earlier this year as a result of scenes involving alcohol consumption and a character not wearing a hijab. The story is set in lovely, sun-kissed Tehran, a city that’s given us romantic cinema over the years, though rarely with such opprobrium.

The film’s unlikely lovers, Mahin and Faramarz, are beautifully played by Lili Farhadpour and Esmaeel Mehrabi––two veteran Iranian actors with 70-odd credits between them,...

Iranian tragicomedy My Favourite Cake continues to sell strongly for Totem Films following its premiere in Berlinale competition last month.

The French sales agent has inked new deals for Australia and New Zealand (Vendetta), Taiwan (Swallow Wings), Indonesia (Falcon), Portugal (Alambique), Brazil (Imovision), Finland (Cinema Mondo), Bulgaria (Betafilm), Greece (Weird Wave), the Baltics (Kino Pavasaris) and former Yugoslavia (Demiurg).

Directed by Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, the film sold to a slew of territories ahead of its Berlin premiere and during EFM including UK and Ireland (Curzon), Spain (A Contracorriente), Italy (Academy Two), Germany and Austria (Alamode), Norway (Arthaus), France...

France’s Totem Films has signed a slew of international deals at the EFM for Berlin competition title My Favourite Cake, directed by Iranian filmmakers Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha.

The Iranian tragicomedy follows a 70-year-old woman who breaks out of her solitary routine by trying to invigorate her love life. The film stars newcomer Lily Farhadpour alongside veteran Iranian actor Esmail Mehrabi.

It has sold to A Contracorriente in Spain, Academy Two in Italy, Alamode for Germany and Austria, and Arthaus in Norway.

The film took an early lead on Screen’s jury grid and had previously inked pre-sales...

Like taxis on a rainy night, you wait for ages for a great, bittersweet film about love in late middle age with a side helping of gastronomic lusciousness — and then two come along at once. Tehran-set but internationally-produced comedy-drama My Favourite Cake premiered at the Berlin Film Festival a day after Valentine’s Day. That day just so happened to overlap with the release of French drama The Taste of Things in several key territories. (Taste opened in the U.S. on Feb. 9.)

Of course, writer-directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha‘s Berlinale competitor is very different from Tran Anh Hung’s period study starring Juliette Binoche and Benoit Magimel, but the two films overlap in fascinating ways. Both remind viewers of the ephemeral nature of all things. Both are sublime portraits of complicated, older souls, one of whom is an excellent cook who expresses love through food. And in both,...

How late is too late? It’s a question that besets Mahin (Lily Farhadpour) a 70-year-old retired nurse who sleeps late, whose late husband is late by 30 years, and who is beginning to wonder if her loneliness might become untenable as late-life gets later still. But the question could also be asked of “My Favourite Cake” itself, which after leaning into Farhadpour’s ample charisma and the lovely, whimsical chemistry she strikes up with co-star Esmail Mehrabi, takes a strangely bitter turn in its home stretch, like a spongy confection whose dangerously high sucrose levels you are only just getting used to, when an unwelcome bit of grit chips a tooth.

The film’s writer-directors, Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, are returning to the Berlin Competition after their “Ballad of a White Cow” played to quite some acclaim here in 2021. Returning, that is, in spirit but not in person, as...

The Iranian directors of Keyke Mahboobe Man (My Favourite Cake) have pledged to push back against censorship back home after they were stopped by authorities in Tehran from traveling to Berlin in time for their world premiere Friday night.

“We’ve have decided to cross all of the restrictive red lines and accept the consequences of our choice to paint a real picture of Iranian women,” Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha said in a statement read to a press conference in Berlin on Friday. The directors were barred from leaving Iran to discuss their film about an elderly woman who wants a normal life.

“We feel like parents who are forbidden from even looking at their newborn child. We have not been allowed today to enjoy watching the film with you, a discerning audience at this film festival. We are sad and tired, but we are not alone,” the directors...

Directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeh were banned by Iranian authorities from traveling to this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where their film “My Favourite Cake” is premiering in competition.

At the film’s press conference on Friday morning, actors Lily Farhadpour and Esmail Mehrabi delivered a powerful message from the directors in the form of a letter as a photo of the two was propped up besides their empty seats.

“Today, a film which we have spent three years of our lives making will be shown here, unfortunately, without our presence. We feel like parents who are forbidden from even looking at their newborn child,” the directors said in the statement. “We have not been allowed today to enjoy watching the film with you, a discerning audience of this important film festival. We are sad and we are tired but we are not alone.”

“My Favourite Cake” stirred up...

Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha won’t be coming to Berlin. The Iranian directors, whose feature Ballad of a White Cow received a rapturous reception here in 2020, were set to attend the 74th Berlinale with their latest competition entry, My Favourite Cake.

“But then the police came, took our passports and told us were banned from traveling,” says Moghaddam, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter via Zoom from the couple’s home in Tehran. “We are now facing a court case because of the film.”

The Berlinale has called on Iran to release the directors, saying it was “shocked and dismayed” to hear of the couple’s fate.

My Favourite Cake follows 70-year-old Mahin (Ballad of a White Cow actress Lili Farhadpour) who, after decades of living alone, decides to revive her love life. On a whim, she propositions Faramarz, a solidarity cab driver (Esmaeel Mehrabi), and invites him to her house.

Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha’s My Favourite Cake in is screening in Competition at the Berlinale today (February 16) but the directors are unable to attend the festival, having been prevented from leaving Iran by its government.

“Six months ago security guards raided our editor’s office, and took all the computers, hard drives and copies of the film,” said Sanaeeha. “They told us there will be a court case, and because of that we can’t leave the country.”

The government still holds their passports and has tried to make them withdraw the film from Berlin. “It feels like...

Iranian director duo Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha were recently banned by Iranian authorities from traveling to this year’s Berlin Film Festival, where their drama “My Favourite Cake” is premiering in competition.

The film is about a 70-year-old woman named Mahin who has been living alone in Tehran ever since her husband died and her daughter left for Europe. Suddenly an incident prompts Mahin to break her solitary routine and revitalize her love life. The directors have a history with the Berlinale, where their previous work, “Ballad of a White Cow,” premiered in 2021 with the directors in tow.

They spoke to Variety via Zoom from Tehran about the increased crackdown against filmmakers in their country.

What have Iranian authorities done to prevent you from coming to Berlin?

Behtash Sanaeeha: Actually, it all started six months ago when security guards raided our editor’s place. They took all the hard...

Paris-based sales and production outfit Totem Films has closed a slew of sales ahead of the Berlinale premieres of their Competition title “My Favourite Cake,” and the Panorama opening film “Crossing.”

Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha’s “My Favourite Cake” sold to Cherry Pickers for Benelux, Camera for Denmark, Arizona for France, Triart for Sweden, Cineworx for Switzerland and Bir for Turkey.

Levan Akin’s “Crossing” sold to Imagine for Benelux, New Story for France, Lucky Red for Italy, Avalon for Spain and Cineworx for Switzerland. As announced previously, a multi-territory deal was also signed with Mubi.

Other territories are in discussion and Totem will continue selling the films at the European Film Market in Berlin.

Totem will also be launching sales in Berlin for “Queen Mom,” which is in post-production. The film is directed by Manele Labidi (“Arab Blues”) and stars Camélia Jordana, Sofiane Zermani, Damien Bonnard and Rim Monfort.

The Berlin Film Festival has called on Iran to allow directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha to leave the country to attend the world premiere of their new film My Favorite Cake, which has been selected to screen in competition at the 74th Berlinale.

In a statement Thursday, the festival said that they have learned that Moghaddam and Sanaeeha have been banned from traveling, have had their passports confiscated by Iranian authorities, and face a court trial connected to their work as artists and filmmakers.

Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha on the set of ‘My Favourite Cake’

“The Berlinale is a festival fundamentally committed to freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of the arts, for all people around the world and the festival is shocked and dismayed to learn that Moghaddam and Sanaeeha could be prevented from traveling to the festival to present their film and meet their audience in Berlin,...

The Berlinale has issued a statement calling for Iranian authorities to allow “My Favourite Cake” directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha to travel to this year’s film festival.

“My Favourite Cake” is set to premiere in competition at the festival, which starts on Feb. 15. Since the announcement, Moghaddam and Sanaeeha have been banned from traveling by Iranian authorities and have had their passports confiscated, according to the Berlinale. They are also facing a court trial “in relation to their work as artists and filmmakers,” the fest said.

“The Berlinale is a festival fundamentally committed to freedom of speech, freedom of expression and freedom of the arts, for all people around the world, and the festival is shocked and dismayed to learn that Moghaddam and Sanaeeha could be prevented from traveling to the festival to present their film and meet their audience in Berlin,” a press release from the festival stated.

Totem Films, the Paris-based sales and production company known for arthouse breakouts such as “Compartment No. 6” and “Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry,” has boarded sales on “My Favourite Cake” by Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha. The Iranian writing-directing duo’s latest feature was just announced in competition at the upcoming Berlinale.

The film stars newcomer Lily Farhadpour as Mahin and renowned Iranian actor Esmail Mehrabi as Faramarz.

Seventy-year-old Mahin lives alone, until she decides to break her solitary routine and revitalize her love life. But as she opens up to romance, an unexpected encounter quickly evolves into an unforgettable evening.

Moghaddam and Sanaeeha said: “’My Favourite Cake’ is based on the reality of the everyday lives of middle-class women in Iran. The realities of women’s lives in Iran have hardly ever been told, yet this is a playful tale about hope and joy in life, as well as the absurdity of death.

Iranian directors Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghadam, whose last collaboration Ballad Of A White Cow made waves on the festival circuit, have been banned from travel and face a trial in relation to their upcoming film My Favourite Cake.

The pair discovered they were subject to a travel ban at Tehran airport at the end of September after their passports were confiscated as they went to catch a flight to Paris to work on post-production of the new film.

They were subsequently told that they faced a trial related to the production.

Local media reported that Iranian security forces had raided the house of the film’s editor, seizing rushes and other materials related to the production.

The country’s hard-line Islamist authorities are believed to have been angered by the work, which according to the official logline, revolves around the “life behind closed doors of an aging woman who...

No filmmaker in Iran is immune to the pressures of censorship. Movies made in the country must gain approval from the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance not only for distribution purposes but for shooting permits as well. For directors and producers with stories that violate government standards — say, a scene where a woman removes her traditional headscarf, or another violation of Islamic law — the options for maintaining creative freedom are simple: Submit a script with the offending scenes removed, then shoot them anyway. Or hit the road.

Panah Panahi took the second option for his acclaimed debut, but “Hit the Road” is hardly an anomaly. “In a sense the car becomes a second house for us Iranians,” Panahi said in a phone interview with IndieWire ahead of his movie’s U.S. release. “There is a level of security inside the car. That’s why you see so many road films.

’Girls Will Be Girls’ took home two prizes.

The Berlinale Co-Production Market has awarded its top prize to French-Iranian project My Favourite Cake.

The feature took home the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award, worth €20,000. It centres on an aging woman who dares to live her desires against society’s expectations. Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha direct, with Caractères Productions and Honare Khiyal producing.

It is the third joint directing effort for Iranian filmmakers Moghaddam and Sanaeeha, whose previous film was 2021 Berlinale competition title Ballad Of A White Cow.

Shuchi Talati’s feature debut Girls Will Be Girls received two prizes. The...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Ballad of a White Cow (Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam)

The cruelty of the Iranian justice system is in the spotlight again in Ballad of a White Cow, the compelling debut of directing team Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam that unfurled in competition at Berlin. Just last year, Mohamad Rasoulof won the festival’s top prize for his anti-capital punishment polemic There Is No Evil, a masterful weaving of four storylines that showed how a morally bankrupt state corrodes those forced to carry out its functions, a searing portrait of the banality of evil. – Ed F. (full review)

Where to Stream: Mubi (free for 30 days)

Bigbug (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)

Bigbug is set in the year 2045 and centers on a group of mismatched suburbanites who,...

Kismet Kisses: Moghaddam & Sanaeeha Mine Intimate Vengeance in Rich Melodrama

The opening moments of Ballad of a White Cow evokes a quote from Al-Baqarah or The Surah of the Cow, the second and longest chapter of the Quran. Within this surah, more than one cow is featured, but the reference regards the slaughter of a cow as a message delivered by Allah to the Israelites through Moses, an action which will reveal who murdered a slain man. Caught in the middle, of course, is a poor, innocent cow.

While this is a rudimentary, and superficial starting point for examining the happenings of this tale of karmic vengeance, it’s the first narrative feature from directors Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha, who previously delivered the 2018 documentary The Invincible Diplomacy of Mr.…...

Paris-based company had a high-profile 2021 with titles including ’Compartment No. 6’ and ‘My Sunny Maad’.

Paris-based Totem Films will launch a quartet of first features with 2022 festival hopes at the EFM next week (February 10-17), including directorial debuts by The Happiest Day In The Life Of Olli Mäki co-writer Mikko Myllylahti and Italian actress Jasmine Trinca.

The company’s 2021 slate enjoyed a buzzy festival run, led by Cannes Grand Prix winner Compartment No. 6 as well as Berlinale best documentary winner We, Berlin Competition title Ballad Of A White Cow and My SunnyMaad, which took the jury award at Annecy.

Finnish...

Next month’s Mubi lineup for the U.S. has been unveiled and a number of our recent festival favorites that were awaiting distribution will be coming to the service, including Mr. Bachmann and His Class, Ballad of a White Cow, Madalena, Taste, The Monopoly of Violence, and For Lucio.

One of last year’s great films, Hong Sangsoo’s The Woman Who Ran, will also be arriving, alongside Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45, the Safdies’ Heaven Knows What, Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, and Leo McCarey’s Love Affair, with the latter two pairing for a Valentine’s Day double feature.

Check out the lineup below and get 30 days free here.

February 1 | The Monopoly of Violence | David Dufresne | From France with Love

February 2 | Looking for Venera | Norika Sefa | Festival Focus: Rotterdam

February 3 | Madalena | Madiano Marcheti | Festival Focus: Rotterdam

February 4 | Honey Cigar | Kamir Aïnouz | From France with Love

February 5 | …and...

After highlighting the most overlooked films of 2021, today we put our spotlight on those that need a home in the first place: movies we loved on the festival circuit—from Berlinale, SXSW, Sundance, TIFF, NYFF, Rotterdam, and beyond—still seeking U.S. distribution.

For acting also as a 2021 retrospective, we hope that highlighting these titles spurs some distributor interests and a release in the next twelve months. Make sure to follow us on Twitter for the latest distribution updates. As we move into 2022, one can also track our upcoming festival coverage here.

We should note that The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet, Taming the Garden, and Liborio nearly made the cut, but they’ll get a digital premiere on Mubi this month.

Ali & Ava (Clio Barnard)

It’s so rare to find a romance between two middle-aged characters in which the main conflict is just baggage of past relationships and past hurt.

Indian helmer Pan Nalin’s “Last Film Show” walked off on Saturday with the top prize, the Golden Spike, at the 66th Valladolid Intl. Film Festival, one of Spain’s biggest and oldest film events and a bastion of festival-prized art film titles.

The French-Indian co-production marks Nalin’s homage to celluloid and is told through the eyes of a nine-year-old boy whose life is turned on its head after he watches his first film at the cinema. World premiering at Tribeca, it became the first foreign-language feature to score as the first runner up for Tribeca’s Audience Award.

Writer and director Pan Nalin said: “What we started in our solitude in a remote countryside of Gujarat has now started to echoing in multitudes the world over. Winning the best picture Golden Spike at the Seminci is like belonging to the rich history of cinema that Valladolid has stood for nearly seven decades.

The 62nd Thessaloniki International Film Festival will return to the movie theaters starting from November 4 to 14, 2021. This year’s celebration of independent cinema will take place in physical spaces as well as online (https://online.filmfestival.gr/).

Among the 197 films to be screened at the Festival (with 144 of these available online), a number of Asian films will feature in the following categories:

International Competition

Moneyboys, C. B. Yi, Austria-France-Taiwan-Belgium, 2021, 120’ (in theatre and online)

Fei works illegally as a hustler in order to support his family, yet when he realizes they are only willing to accept his money but not his way of life, their relationship breaks down. Together with the headstrong Long, Fei seems to find a new lease on life, but then he encounters Xiaolai, the love of his youth, who confronts him with the guilt of his repressed past.

White Building, Kavich Neang, Cambodia-France-China-Qatar, 2020, 90’ (in theatre and online...

The 17th Zurich Film Festival concluded Saturday with wins for Jonas Carpignano‘s “A Chiara” and Fred Baillif’s “La Mif,” with Renato Borrayo Serrano’s “Life of Ivanna” named best documentary.

The jury, led by Daniel Brühl, and featuring director Stéphanie Chuat, former Berlinale chief Dieter Kosslick and producer Andrea Cornwell, decided to award “A Chiara” with the prize for the best film of the Feature Film Competition. The Italian-French-Swedish-Danish co-production sees a teenage girl in a Calabrian town discovering her father’s criminal involvement.

“We were swept away by the modern take on the Italian neorealist tradition, the exceptional use of music and sound design and the outstanding performances by Swami Rotolo and her family, all making their film debuts. This film is nothing less than a cinematic masterpiece,” argued the jury, calling the decision “unanimous.”

Clint Bentley’s “Jockey” – praised for “an incredible performance” by Clifton Collins Jr.,...

Paris-based international sales and production company Totem Films has added Gábor Fabricius’ “Erasing Frank” to its Cannes market lineup.

Set in 1983, behind the Iron Curtain of Eastern Europe in Budapest, the film follows Frank, the charismatic singer of a banned punk band that carries the voice of their generation against a totalitarian regime. Taken to the police psychiatric hospital in an attempt to silence him, Frank will sacrifice everything to resist.

The film is produced by Otherside Stories and supported by the National Film Institute Hungary.

Fabricius, a graduate of Central Saint-Martins College London, has published two novels and directed several shorts. “Erasing Frank” is his debut feature.

“‘Erasing Frank’ is an attempt to redefine direct cinema and social drama. I want to let the audience go through raw experience in a deshumanized Orwellian reality,” said Fabricius.

“Gabor’s mise en scene is flawless. He depicts the rage of a...

Prominent Iranian producer Gholamreza Moosavi, whose latest film is Berlin standout “Ballad of a White Cow,” has been hospitalized in Tehran due to Covid-19, London-based Iran International TV has reported.

Moosavi, 69, who is president of Iran’s film producers’ union and also heads Film Iran, which is the country’s largest domestic distributor, is in an intensive care unit of Tehran’s private Nikan Hospital due to coronavirus, Iran International said in a statement.

Last month French distributor Totem Films sold “Ballad of a White Cow” – the Berlin competition title co-directed by Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam about a woman’s struggle for justice, recognition and independence in today’s Tehran – to a slew of European territories. The pic was produced by Moosavi and French producer Etienne de Ricaud.

Moosavi’s other producer credits comprise social dramas “Hatred,” directed by Reza Dormishain, which went to several international festivals; “Last Theft...

With a two-part structure featuring an online press and industry component that’s just concluded, followed by physical screenings this summer, the Berlin International Film Festival is unveiling a selection of the year’s finest films. Along with our extensive coverage of the festival (with a few reviews still to come), we’ve asked our Berlinale contributors to share their personal favorites. Check out their lists below, with links to coverage where available.

Ed Frankl

Memory Box

1. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)

2. Memory Box (Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige)

3. Brother’s Keeper (Ferit Karahan)

4. Ballad of a White Cow (Behtash Sanaeeha & Maryam Moghaddam)

5. Ninjababy (Yngvild Sve Flikke)

Honorable Mentions: The Fam, Language Lessons, Natural Light, Taste, and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy.

Leonardo Goi

Taste

1. Taste (Lê Bảo)

2. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)

3. The Scary of Sixty-First (Dasha Nekrasova)

4. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)

5. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude...

The cruelty of the Iranian justice system is in the spotlight again in Ballad of a White Cow, the compelling debut of directing team Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam that unfurled in competition at Berlin. Just last year, Mohamad Rasoulof won the festival’s top prize for his anti-capital punishment polemic There Is No Evil, a masterful weaving of four storylines that showed how a morally bankrupt state corrodes those forced to carry out its functions, a searing portrait of the banality of evil.

Ballad of a White Cow covers some of the same tracks, but it’s a more personable film, almost entirely centered around a deft central performance by its co-director, Maryam Moghaddam, as Mina, a young mother struggling after her husband Babak is wrongfully sentenced to death for murder.

In a Kafkaesque sequence of events, the Iranian authorities tell her that a witness to the crime was the actual murderer,...

Already devastated by her husband’s execution, Mina (played by co-director Maryam Moghaddam) discovers that the man she loves was put to death for a crime he didn’t commit in “Ballad of a White Cow.” That would seem to be injustice enough for one person to bear, but in conservative Iranian culture, now that Mina’s a widow, she has less power than ever: Fired from her job, evicted from her apartment and pressured toward marrying her pushy brother-in-law (Pourya Rahimiam), Mina faces limited options when it comes to caring for her deaf-mute daughter, Bita (Avin Poor Raoufi).

If all of this sounds like a recipe for a thoroughly depressing spiral toward the bottom, à la “Bicycle Thieves” and its neorealist ilk, think again. Sure, “Ballad” can be brutal, but Moghaddam and co-helmer Behtash Sanaeeha (who first collaborated on “Risk of Acid Rain”) also see it as a story...

Iranian multihyphenate Maryam Moghaddam was last seen on screen in Berlin in Jafar Panahi and Kambuzia Partovi’s “Closed Curtain,” which in 2013 won the Silver Bear for best script. She’s back as protagonist of “Ballad of a White Cow,” which Moghaddam also co-directed and co-wrote with her partner Behtash Sanaeeha. The pic features a potent central character named Mina, the struggling single mother of a deaf daughter contending with the consequences of a blatant injustice: her husband Babak has been executed for a crime he did not commit.

As Mina battles for a public apology from the judges who erroneously served her husband’s death sentence, a stranger, Reza, appears on her doorstep, saying that he has come to repay a debt he owes to Babak. As Reza helps her cope with the complications of her predicament, Mina gradually opens up to him, unaware of the terrible secret that binds them together.

Paris-based Totem Films has scored a raft of international sales on Iranian directors Behtash Sanaeeha and Maryam Moghaddam’s Berlin Film Festival competition entry, “Ballad of a White Cow.”

“Ballad of a White Cow,” as sales agent Totem notes, is the story of a woman’s struggle for justice, recognition and independence in today’s Tehran. The film, which is being shopped at this week’s European Film Market (EFM), is centred on Mina (Moghaddam), a struggling single mother of a deaf daughter who is devastated to learn that her husband Babak was executed a year earlier for a crime he didn’t commit.

As she battles for a public apology from the judges who served her husband’s death sentence, a stranger, Reza, appears on her doorstep, explaining that he has come to repay a debt he owes to Babak. Mina gradually opens up to him, unaware of the...

Much of modern Iranian cinema revolves around the repressive nature of a society indifferent to individual needs, where religious values risk suffocating fragile, innocent lives. “Ballad of a White Cow” doesn’t reinvent that trend, but it’s a particularly taut, engrossing example, compelled by one woman’s determination for justice and the lies that surround her at every turn. The movie turns on a constant stream of grief and guilt, even as it develops into

Co-directed by Maryam Moghaddam (in her narrative debut) and Behtash Sanaeeha (“Risk of Acid Rain”), “Ballad of a White Cow” bears all the hallmarks of the patient, absorbing character studies of Iranian heavyweights Mohammad Rasolouf and Asgar Farhadi, and deserves consideration alongside their strongest work. In fact, the plight of Mina (Moghaddam as well) wouldn’t look out of place as one of the chapters in “There Is No Evil,” the anthology of stories...

‘Forest – I See You Everywhere’ and ‘What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?’ also rated by critics panel.

Petite Maman, the latest film from Girlhood and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire director Céline Sciamma, has scored consistent marks on the Screen jury grid for an average of 2.6.

Petite Maman received no scores lower than a two (average), although that was its modal score with four critics making that choice.

It did receive one four (excellent) from The Morning Star’s Rita Di Santo; and currently sits in fifth place with three of the 15 films still to score.

‘Forest – I See You Everywhere’ and ‘What Do We See When We Look At The Sky?’ also land.

Petite Maman, the latest film from Girlhood and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire director Céline Sciamma, has scored consistent marks on the Screen jury grid for an average of 2.6.

Petite Maman received no scores lower than a two (average), although that was its modal score with four critics making that choice.

It did receive one four (excellent) from The Morning Star’s Rita Di Santo; and currently sits in fifth place with three of the 15 films still to score.

Sciamma’s film centres on eight-year-old Nelly,...

Adding another strong voice to the chorus of anti-capital-punishment films coming out of Iran is Ballad of a White Cow (Ghasideyeh gave sefid), a drama almost entirely centered on the wife of a condemned man who is wrongfully executed for murder in the opening scene. Played with huge amounts of feminine dignity by Maryam Moghaddam, who co-directed with Behtash Sanaeeha, the widow Mina is shown to be refreshingly capable of raising her deaf daughter on her own and navigating the minefield of a highly misogynistic society — and even (gasp) of finding love.

But as hostility against Mina builds from her ...

Adding another strong voice to the chorus of anti-capital-punishment films coming out of Iran is Ballad of a White Cow (Ghasideyeh gave sefid), a drama almost entirely centered on the wife of a condemned man who is wrongfully executed for murder in the opening scene. Played with huge amounts of feminine dignity by Maryam Moghaddam, who co-directed with Behtash Sanaeeha, the widow Mina is shown to be refreshingly capable of raising her deaf daughter on her own and navigating the minefield of a highly misogynistic society — and even (gasp) of finding love.

But as hostility against Mina builds from her ...