Fajr Film Festival has unveiled the poster and the movies that will be showing at this year’s Festival of Festivals program, entitled Cup of Divination or Jam-e Jahan Nama.
Top movies from Iran, China, Germany, Italy, Egypt, France, Slovakia, UK, Spain, and Argentina, among others, will grace this year’s program.
Here are all the titles screening:
The Teacher (2016)
1h 42min | Comedy | Drama
Director: Jan Hrebejk
Cast: Zuzana Mauréry, Zuzana Konecná, Csongor Kassai
Country: Slovakia | Czech Republic
Language: Slovak
Storyline: The film is set in 1983. Maria Drazdechova becomes a teacher at one suburban school near Bratislava. She starts to use her position to blackmail parents of her students to get benefits from them. Students whose parents disobey are bullied and given bad grades.
Mr. No Problem (2016)
2h 24min | Drama
Director: Feng Mei
Cast: Wei Fan, Tao Yin, Yihong Shi
Country: China
Language: Mandarin
Storyline: Shot in stylish black-and-white, this three-act fable, set in wartime Chongqing, focuses on the indifferent rich, the head clerk on a farm, and some young intruders. Based on a 1943 short story, the film is directed by noted screenwriter Mei Feng.
In the Last Days of the City (2016)
1h 58min | Drama
Director: Tamer El Said
Cast: Khalid Abdalla, Laila Samy, Hanan Youssef
Country: Egypt | Germany | UK | United Arab Emirates
Language: Arabic
Storyline: Downtown Cairo, 2009. Khalid, a 35-year-old filmmaker is struggling to make a film that captures the soul of his city while facing loss in his own life. With the help of his friends, who send him footage from their lives in Beirut, Baghdad and Berlin, he finds the strength to keep going through the difficulty and beauty of living IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE CITY.
Pyromaniac (2016)
1h 38min | Drama
Director: Erik Skjoldbjærg
Cast: Trond Nilssen, Liv Bernard Osa, Per Frisch, Agnes Kittelsen
Country: Norway
Language: Norwegian
Storyline: A pyromaniac ignites his first fire in a peaceful village. In the weeks to come it is followed by a series of fires, spreading fear in the small community. An inferno lurks under the surface as a local policeman uncovers the unthinkable truth: the pyromaniac is one of the local firemen, and the son of the fire brigade’s chief.
King of the Belgians (2016)
1h 34min | Comedy | Drama
Directors: Peter Brosens, Jessica Woodworth
Cast: Peter Van den Begin, Lucie Debay, Titus De Voogdt
Country: Belgium | Netherlands | Bulgaria
Language: English | Flemish | French | Bulgarian
Storyline: While Nicolas III, King of the Belgians, is doing an official visit to Istanbul, a breaking new arrives: Wallonia just declared its independence and so the Belgium doesn’t exist anymore. In order to face the political crisis, Nicolas III decides to quickly come back home, but due to a geomagnetic storm all the flights are blocked.
The Shepherd (2016)
1h 38min | Drama
Director: Jonathan Cenzual Burley
Cast: Maribel Iglesias, Miguel Martín, Alfonso Mendiguchía
Country: Spain
Language: Spanish
Storyline: Anselmo, a middle-aged shepherd, lives a modest but happy life in a remote house in the Spanish plains. When he refuses a juicy offer from a construction company planning to build a new residential complex on his property, little does he know that his life is about to be turned upside down.
The Confessions (2016)
1h 48min | Drama | Thriller
Director: Roberto Andò
Main Cast: Toni Servillo, Daniel Auteuil, Pierfrancesco Favino
Country: Italy | France
Language: Italian | French | English
Storyline: A G8 meeting is being held at a luxury hotel on the German coast. The world’s most powerful economists are gathered to enact important provisions that will deeply influence the world economy. One of the guests is a mysterious Italian monk, invited by Daniel Rochè, the director of the International Monetary Fund. He wants the monk to receive his confession, that night, in secret. The next morning, Rochè is found dead.
150 Milligrams (2016)
2h 8min | Drama
Director: Emmanuelle Bercot
Cast: Sidse Babett Knudsen, Benoît Magimel, Charlotte Laemmel
Country: France
Language: French
Storyline: Irène Frachon, a doctor who lives in the Breton town of Brest, dares to stand up to the French health and pharmaceutical industry, helping to uncover the media scandal surrounding the commercialization of a controversial medicine whose side effects have caused the death of hundreds of people.
Cold of Kalandar (2015)
2h 10min | Drama
Director: Mustafa Kara
Cast: Haydar Sisman, Nuray Yesilaraz, Hanife Kara
Country: Hungary | Turkey
Language: Turkish | Turkish
Storyline: “Cold of Kalandar” pictures within a unique pastoral atmosphere the realist, passionate and emotional story of Mehmet and his family living far from modern life, in a mountain village.
Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog (2017)
1h 39min | Comedy
Director: Julian Radlmaier
Cast: Julian Radlmaier, Deragh Campbell, Beniamin Forthi
Country: Germany | Italy
Language: German
Storyline: A bourgeois dog and former filmmaker confesses how he became four-legged by failing in love, apple-picking and revolution. A political comedy with magic twists.
Wastelands (2016)
1h 34min | Drama
Director: Miriam Heard
Cast: Julio Milostich, Erto Pantoja, Heidrun Breier
Country: Chile | France | UK
Language: Spanish
Storyline: Private military contractors: the hidden face of dirty wars. Two brothers return to Chile after years in Iraq.
The Distinguished Citizen (2016)
1h 58min | Comedy | Drama
Directors: Gastón Duprat, Mariano Cohn
Cast: Oscar Martínez, Dady Brieva, Andrea Frigerio
Country: Argentina | Spain
Language: Spanish
Storyline: After refusing big and prestigious awards all over the world, Mr. Mantovani, Literature Nobel Prize winner, accepts an invitation to visit his hometown in Argentina, which has been the inspiration for all of his books. It turns out that accepting this invitation is the worse idea of his life.
Greetings from Fukushima (2016)
1h 48min | Drama
Director: Doris Dörrie
Cast: Rosalie Thomass, Kaori Momoi, Nami Kamata
Country: Germany
Language: English | German | Japanese
Storyline: A young German woman bonds with an elderly Japanese woman while touring the Fukushima region of Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake.
Anisoara (2016)
1h 46min | Drama
Director: Ana Felicia Scutelnicu
Cast: Anisoara Morari
Country: Germany | Moldova
Language: Romanian | Russian | German
Storyline: Anishoara is a 15–year-old girl, who lives in a beautiful village in Moldova. She grows up without mother and takes care of her little brother Andrei and her alcoholic father Petru.
Lion (2016)
1h 58min | Biography | Drama
Director: Garth Davis
Cast: Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman, Rooney Mara
Country: Australia | USA | UK
Language: English | Bengali | Hindi
Storyline: On a trip with his brother, Saroo finds himself alone and trapped in a moving decommissioned passenger train that takes him to Calcutta. Saroo struggles to survive as a street child until he is sent to an orphanage. Soon, Saroo is selected to be adopted by the Brierley family in Tasmania, where he grows up in a loving, prosperous home. However, for all his material good fortune, Saroo finds himself plagued by his memories of his lost family in his adulthood and tries to search for them even as his guilt drives him to hide this quest from his adoptive parents and his girlfriend.
The Dark Wind (2016)
1h 32min | Drama
Director: Hussein Hassan
Cast: Rekesh Shabaz, Diman Zandi, Maryam Boobani, Adil Abdulrahman
Country: Iraq | Germany | Qatar
Language: Kurdish | Arabic
Storyline: Reko and Pero are a Yazidi couple preparing for their wedding, when ISIS fighters attack their village. Young Yazidi girls, including Pero, sold as slaves are tortured and raped. Reko is devastated by the attack. While searching for his family and Pero, he witnesses the tragic consequences of the attacks on the Yazidis.
For all festivalgoers who are already planning their visit, check screening time and other information at Fajriff.com or email the Secretariat at Film@Fajriff.com.
Presided over by Reza Mirkarimi, the 35th edition of Fajr International Film Festival will take place from 21 to 28 April in Tehran.
