by Alex Deleon   As New York Yankees catcher/philospher, Yogi Berra, once put it. "It ain't over till it's over", but as the fest winds down, the smart  ninth day money is on the Iranian film Jodaeiye Nader az Simin ("Nader and Simin -- a Separation"). The Berlin festival is nothing if not political in tone, and this year the political emphasis has been on protesting against Iranian film censorship. However, this family drama is not overtly political in natu...

Two War Films, "Cold Tears", 2004, and "Night Bus", 2007. The war between Sadam Hussein's Iraq and the Islamic Republic of Iran lasted nearly a decade, from 1980 to 1988, and was treated as a kind of side-show in the western press, but it was the main event in that part of the world and has provided fodder for countless Iranian films ever since. Two of these were presented in the current survey. Dated 2004 and 2007 these films show that nearly 20 years down the line this war is still far from a ...

In conjunction with the Iranian embassy the Örökmogó Filmmuseum, which is the outlet for the Hungarian Film Archive and presents a selection of international films all year round, is presenting a ten film survey here of recent Iranian film productions in what amounts to a mini Iranian film festival. The survey includes two slightly older films from the years 1992 and 1999, but the remainder are all films made after the turn of the millenium, primarily those released since 2004. Ever since t...