The Iranian Film Week in Budapest opening film, "Kheili Dour, Kheili Nazdik", (Very far, very near), 2OO5, directed by Sayyed Reza Mir-Karimi, was one of the best of the lot and also the longest with a running time of 12O minutes. A middle-aged neurosurgeon (played by the charismatic actor Masoud Rayegany) comes back to Teheran on the eve of the Persian New Year after a long stay in the west to spend the holidays with his teenage son, an avid student of astronomy. You can see that he feels a l...

The 31st Starz Denver Film Festival (SDFF) will honor an outstanding and wide array of talented film artists during the 11-day festival which kicks off November 13 and runs through November 23. Actor Bill Pullman will receive the Festival's prestigious John Cassavetes Award while Richard Jenkins will be presented with the Excellence in Acting Award. Additionally, SDFF will pay tribute to cinematographer Wally Pfister, Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi and Swiss filmmaker Thomas Imbach for their ...

 Monday, July 30------- With Iran very much in the news in the United States these days (mostly negative), it is a kind of act of artistic defiance for courageous film distributors to bring to the American public another view of the "axis of evil". Those in the know have long realized that Iranian cinema is among the most poetic, visually magnificent and humanistic.....a far cry from the way most Americans are taught to think of the country and its citizens. A new addition to the rost...

Danish film "Adam's Apples" by Anders Thomas Jensen won the Audience Award at the 21st Warsaw International Film Festival, October 7-16, 2005.The Top Five films of the festival, according to the Warsaw audience, were: 1. "Adam's Apples" by Anders Thomas Jensen 2. "A Driver for Vera" by Pavel Chukhray 3. "Live and Become" by Radu Mihaileanu 4. "As It Is In Heaven" by Kay Pollak 5. "Corpse Bride" by Tim Burton & Mike Johnson.The first Audience Award at WIFF went in 1987 to "Birdy" by Alan Pa...