The cinema industry in Iran has, for decades, been outstanding, a succession of world-renowned directors, writers, producers, performers, presence at many festivals, many awards. This is the background to this entertaining film, made by Iranian-Scottish writer-director, our son knows there. He is from Aberdeen but has written this story about life in the run, a country village, bringing it to life, its Post Office, homes and television, school, children and the rubbish heap’s for collecting and selling plastic, all with the background of Uranian cinema.
This film could be called Oscar, or the Adventures of Oscar – that is, the Academy Award winning statuette, the statue awarded to Asgard variety for The Salesman, the best Foreign Language Film, 2017, and the director not going to Hollywood because of Donald Trump’s banning of travellers from Iran. Here it is being brought home by an assistant who inadvertently leaves it in the taxi, the taxi driver upset, taking it to a country Post Office, an assistant of 28 years borrowing it for photos and losing it in the desert, its being found by a young boy – and many unexpected consequences.
Many Iranian films focus on stories of children and this is very much in this vein, the excellent presence of the boy, Passer mug Army, poor, his mother rousing on him for his television and film watching, very knowledgeable about films, eager to see Cinema Paradiso, DVD supplied by his friend at the rubbish heap. In charge of the rubbish heap is an elderly man who turns out to be an actor (with the actor himself assuming a character but with reference to his winning the Silver Bear in Berlin, 2008, four colour).
The film has the light touch, some serious themes about actors, becoming victims of celebrity, wanting to retire, themes of children, school bullying, themes of poverty in the Uranian countryside.
The thought occurs that if a British version of the screenplay had been available in the 1950s, it would have been the making of a wonderful Ealing Studios comedy.
Reviewed by Fr. Peter Malone, MSC
More info on WINNERS (Film)
UK, 2022, 85 minutes, Colour.
Reza Naji, Parsa Maghami, Hossein Abedini, Helia Mohammadkhani.
Directed by Hassan Nazer.
Worth Pondering... 