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PERSEPOLIS, by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud

IRANIAN CINEMA IN THREE DRAMATIC ACTS

First act – PERSEPOLIS, an animation by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, which generates protests by the Iranian government against the French government. There is nothing to be unsaid. The animation is autobiographic. It follows a little girl since she is eight, a daughter of intelectuals persecuted in Tehran. At the age of 14 she is sent to a lonely exile in Vienna. Satrapi was already successful all over the world among children and adults with her four volumes of graphic novels.

The film is a frontal denouncement of fundamentalist totalitarianism that has dominated Iran since the fall of the monarchic tyranny. It does an inventory of the repression that oppresses, above all, women, since the power was taken by the ayatollahs, to the terrible terror of nowadays. Things that many Iranian filmmakers couldn’t break through censorship to bring to screen, the animations by Satrapi and Parannaud illustrate with all colors. Mainly on black and white, and some significant passages in color.

The animation has involving traces. We follow the drama of the Iranian family through three generations. In France, where Satrapi lives and is successful, the film profits from the voices by Catherine Deneuve, Chiara Mastroianni (mother and daughter in real life) and Danielle Darrieux. The film will be distributed in the USA by Sony Classics and Catherine Deneuve has already confirmed she will give her voice to English version too.

Film in competition at the 60th Cannes Festival.Second act – Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami announced the project of his new film COPIE CONFORME, to be produced again by French producer Marin Karmitz, with actress Juliette Binoche and to be shot in Italy, Florence with a 4,5 million Euros budget.
Juliette Binoche had manifested her desire to work wiht Abbas Kiarostami right after winning the Best Supporting Actress with THE ENGLISH PACIENT (Anthony Minghella), in 1997. The new film by master Kiarostami will tell the story of an English writer taking a short trip with a French woman to San Gimignano. Dialogues will be in French, English and Italian.

When he won the Golden Palm in Cannes with A TASTE OF CHERRY, instead of being celebrated when arriving back to his country, Kiarostami was harassed from the airport for having kissed Catherine Deneuve at the delivery of his award on the festival stage. Such irrationality, plus the lack of freedom of expression in Iran, seem to be driving the filmmaker away from his country and his roots. We are lucky enough he is still working.

Third act – The Makhmalbaf family hasn’t been that lucky, father Mohsen and daughter Samira, as famous and popular around the world as Abbas Kiarostami. The production of TWO-LEGGED HORSE, directed by Samira, has been interrupted since March 27, when a bomb exploded at the film set in Afghanistan. The terrorist act was registered by Samira’s camera, wounded six members of the crew and killed the horse that gives name to the film.

Samira told us in Cannes that if it hasn’t been for the horse, that absorbed great part of the impact of the bomb, lots of people would have died. She and her father, supported by the French producing house Wild Bunch, went to Cannes to promote seven minutes of the film, which is 85% ready. The Makhmalbaf family doesn’t know where to shoot anymore. It doesn’t work in Iran anymore, where they have been officially forbidden to make movies. They went to India, Afghanistan and passed by other former soviet republics in central Asia. They are now thinking of finishing the film in Tajikistan.

It is not the first time the family suffers with terrorism. During the shooting of KANDAHAR, Mohsen escaped two murder attempts. His youngest daughter, Hana, suffered two kidnapping attempts while she was making the documentary about Samira’s last feature AT FIVE IN THE AFTERNOON, in 2002. Some hours after the bomb attack, American troops have supposedly arrested a suspect connected to terrorist organization Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And the last and shocking news is the money offer the Iranian Embassy in Italy made for the Rome Festival not to show the films signed Mahmalbaf.

More information in :
www.festival-cannes.org

English version: Laura Rebessi