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  Director: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Script: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Cinematography: Mahmoud Kalari
Editor: Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Music: Nadjid Entezami
Cast: Mirhadi Tayebi, Ali Bakhsi, Ammar Tafti, Maryam Mohamadamini, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Moharram Zaynalzadeh
Producer: Abolfazl Alagheband



Production: Pakhshiran (Iran)/MK2 Prods. (France)
International distribution: MK2, Paris



Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Boycott
Bread and Flower
Kandahar
Marriage of the Blessed
Once Upon a Time, Cinema
Testing Democracy from ('Tales from an Island')
The Actor
The Cyclist
The Day I Became a Woman
The Door (from 'Kish Tales')
The Peddler
   
BREAD AND FLOWER
NUN VA GOLDOON



Iran-France, 1996, 78 min, color


Awards: Locarno '96 - Special Mention


During the Shah's regime Mohsen Makhmalbaf is a 17-year old guerrilla and along with a girl, who is a guerrilla too, he attacks a policeman to disarm him. The policeman and Makhmalbaf wound each other and the girl disappears. 20 years later Makhmalbaf is a director and places an ad in the newspaper to recruit people for "Salam Cinema". The ex-policeman goes to Makhmalbaf's house and leaves a message that he would like to receive a role. Makhmalbaf decides to make a movie of the incident that happened 20 years ago, but from today's view. He chooses a 17-year-old young man to play his part. Then each of them follows his own youth with a separate camera to find the truth about the incident. Both of them reach the place of the incident from two different directions but the 17- year old youth is not willing to act violently and wound the policeman, even for justice. It becomes clear that 20 years ago the policeman fell in love with the guerrilla girl. And even when he got wounded he did not discover the secret and he carried the sorrow of that love for 20 years, looking for the girl. And now that he realizes the truth, he looks back to the 20 years he has lost.

    MOHSEN MAKHMALBAF





One of the most popular and influential Iranian filmmakers is born in 1957 in a poor neighborhood in Tehran. At the age of 15, he quit school to provide for his family. He became involved with a militant terrorist group battling against the Shah's regime. at the age of 17 he was sentenced to die after stabbing a policeman. Ultimately, his youth allowed him to escape the fate of a firing squad, and after serving only five years of his sentence he was freed in the wake of the country's 1979 Islamic revolution. After his release Makhmalbaf helped establish an artists' group known as the Center for the Propagation of Islamic Thought, and he became a prolific writer of plays, essays, short stories, and finally screenplays.
His first filmed script was 1981's "The Explanation", filmed by Manuchehr Haghaniparast and he directed his first feature "Nassouh's Repentance" in 1983. Throughout the remainder of the decade, he wrote and directed roughly one film a year, each wildly different in style and content. With 1986's "The Peddler", Makhmalbaf first began attracting international film-festival attention. With 1990's "Time of Love" and its immediate follow-up, "The Nights of Zayandeh Roud", he also came under the scrutiny of the censors, which promptly banned both features.
While making 1993's "The Actor", a satire of the media in contemporary Iran, his first wife burned to death in a domestic accident (he later married her sister Marzieh Meshkini). With 1996's "Gabbeh", he even found U.S. distribution for his work. Makhmalbaf was also the subject of several documentaries, among them Abbas Kiarostami's "Close-Up".



1983  Tobeh Nosuh
1984  Do Cheshman Beesu
1984  Este'aze
1986  Boycott
1987  Dastforough
1989  Bicycleran
1989  Arousi-ye Khouban
1990  Nobat e asheghi
1991  Shabhaye Zayendeh-Rood
1992  Nassereddin Shah, Actor-e Cinema
1993  Honarpisheh
1995  Salaam Cinema
1996  Gabbeh
1996  Nun va Goldoon
1998  Sokhout
1999  Ghesse Haye Kish - segment "The Door"
2000  Tales of an Island - segment "Testing Democracy"
2001  Safar e Ghandehar

 
                 
 
   © 2002 Production Company "Art Fest"