HOUSTON’S IRANIAN FILM FESTIVAL FEATURES FEMALE STORIES.
It’s the 25th anniversary of the Houston Iranian Film Festival and it comes at an appropriate time.
Iran is elbowing its way back into the headlines with protesters taking to the streets to challenge the hardline regime while the Trump administration is making it clear that it ultimately wants to rip up the Iranian nuclear deal. So, it feels even more pressing for moviegoers to explore this culture, which is so rich, complex and — for most Americans — forbidding.
Iranian filmmakers, both at home and in the large, far-flung diaspora, continue to artfully skirt the fine line between censorship and creativity, developing a catalog of work that offers a sobering peek into the workaday lives of average Iranians, especially women and girls who have it especially arduous. The best-known example is “A Separation,” Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar-winning 2011 film about a couple’s crumbling marriage set against the severe backdrop of a theocratic Islamic state, or the same director’s “The Salesman,” about a couple whose marriage suffers after the wife is assaulted, which screened at last year’s festival.
This year’s festival lineup, mostly at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, but also at the Rice Media Center and the Asia Society Texas Center, promises similar discoveries. Here’s a rundown of what to expect.
“Breath” 7 p.m. Friday, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
At first, the universe of young Bahar, a precocious young girl who idolizes her itinerant father, seems one of usual childhood concerns, where her biggest worries are grandma’s very old-school ideas about corporal punishment and why the cute, smart boy in her class won’t notice her. She reads at a level beyond her years and often drifts into daydreams, charmingly realized through animation. But, it’s the late ’70s/early ’80s, and the outside world — the protests, the fall of the shah, the war with Iraq — slowly changes everything. The energetic Bahar is played by an absolutely adorable Sareh Nour Mousavi, while director/writer Narges Abyar proves herself to be a talent to watch. xxx
“Ava” 7 p.m. Saturday, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
This is a pre-release screening of Sadaf Foroughi’s comingof-age story about a rebellious young girl growing up in Tehran. There’s been some buzz about this one, as it received an honorable mention at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the Hollywood Reporter labeled it “insightful.”
“Tehran Taboo” 9 p.m. Saturday, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
This knockout of a film may be animated but it’s most definitely not for kids. Director/co-writer Ali Soozandeh uses the technique known as rotoscope (drawing over live-action sequences) to tell intersecting stories about the constricted, and often hypocritical, life in contemporary Tehran, especially when it comes to