Hossein Eidizadeh
Film Critic and Festival Advisor
Iran
Voted for
| Film | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| Taste of Cherry | 1997 | Abbas Kiarostami |
| Zanburak | 1975 | Farokh Ghafari |
| All Three, He Said (Goft har se nafareshan) | 1979 | Gholamali Erfan |
| El Mumia | 1970 | Shadi Abdelsalam |
| ALEXANDRIE ENCORE ET TOUJOURS | 1990 | Youssef Chahine |
| WECHMA | 1970 | Hamid Bénani |
| INTERVENTION DIVINE | 2002 | Elia Suleiman |
| Once upon a Time in Anatolia | 2011 | Nuri Bilge Ceylan |
| GAZL EL BANAT | 1985 | Jocelyne Saab |
| The Blood of Hussain | 1980 | Jamil Dehlavi |
Comments
Taste of Cherry
Kiarostami at his best with one of the most alluring film endings ever.
Zanburak
An Iranian Decameron that blends social criticism with a sense of humour you rarely find elsewhere.
All Three, He Said (Goft har se nafareshan)
An innovative gem, lost for a long time, which deserves to be restored and rewatched; by a director who made two amazing features before leaving Iran and moving to France to write novels.
El Mumia
A beautiful allegorical film which questions past values and takes a sceptical look at modern society.
ALEXANDRIE ENCORE ET TOUJOURS
Chahine made lots of great films, and this one is his Eight and a Half, a love letter to cinema and his country.
WECHMA
A bleak and harsh film about a young man whose family and society suppress him in the same way.
INTERVENTION DIVINE
No one can tell a bittersweet story about Palestine better than Suleiman, with his unique style.
Once upon a Time in Anatolia
Mesmerising and brutal: if Dostoevsky was alive he would certainly have loved this film.
GAZL EL BANAT
Saab's amazing fiction film, after years of making meticulous documentaries, is a great testimony of life in Beirut in the 1980s.
The Blood of Hussain
A modern and fresh retelling of the life of Imam Hussain, where history and reality clash; unfortunately, there is no hope in Dehlavi's film.
Further remarks
With respect to David Lynch, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Orson Welles, Peter Greenaway, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Stanley Kubrick, Charlie Chaplin, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Kenji Mizoguchi, and all the other masters of cinema, I seize this opportunity to select ten films that represent the cinema of my region. It may not be a comprehensive list, but that was not my intention; instead, I tried to select those of my favourite titles which are usually neglected or missed (not all of them, though) when it comes to such polls. These movies may be flawed; however, they all have something that made them memorable for me, a magic touch that I can never forget.