Word: makhmalbaf
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...Afghani children in Kandahar, by Kiarostami's compatriot Mohsen Makhmalbaf, do not smile. One comely lad in a Taliban school loads a Kalashnikov rifle and obediently proclaims its virtues?it "kills the living and mutilates the dead"?as a mullah praises his recitation. ("Weapons," a visiting doctor says later, "are the only modern thing in Afghanistan.") Another boy, an orphan in the desert, will peddle anything, including himself, to keep going. He attaches himself to an educated Iranian woman who has returned from Canada to save her sister. As Makhmalbaf showed in Gabbeh, he is Iran's great colorist; here...
Three of the winners came from Iran's burgeoning cinema. Hassan Yektapanah's "Djomeh" and Bahman Ghobadi's "A Time from Drunken Horses" shared the Camera d'Or for best first film. And Samira Makhmalbaf received a Jury Prize for "Blackboards," a potent minimalist epic about itinerant Kurdish teachers. Makhmalbaf is a rare creature: a woman filmmaker in the fundamentalist Islamic republic and, at 20, the youngest director to win a prize at Cannes. Makhmalbaf said she accepted the award "on behalf of the young, new generation of hope in my homeland - to honor the heroic affairs of those...
...Makhmalbaf shared the Jury prize with Sweden's Roy Andersson, whose "Songs from the Second Floor" is a handsomely shot series of tragicomic tableaux and trompes l'oeil. The screenplay award went to Neil LaBute's "Nurse Betty," with Renee Zellweger as a young widow propelled by shock into a soap-opera world...
...Apple told through pictures and parables what it could not have explicitly voiced aloud in a nation still silenced by censors. Produced by 17-year-old director Samira Makhmalbaf, The Apple suggested to the young masses of Iran--youth born after 1979 now comprise over two-thirds of Iran's population--that their generation must find a way to unlock the doors that muffle their voices...
While Rosieand Xiu Xiupresent complex themes that abounded at the festival, they cannot possibly represent the diverse range of films. Maggie Hadleigh-West's documentaryWar Zoneexplores street harassment and sexist catcalls across America. In Apple,young Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf captures twin girls viewing the outside world for the first time. Some films were less enlightening and simply plodding, such as Maria Ripoll's romantic comedy Once Upon a Yesterday,which features second chances and fate...