After over a decade of being persecuted and imprisoned by the Iranian government, Jafar Panahi made his triumphant in-person return to the Cannes Film Festival this year, where he presented what may be his most courageous film yet. It Was […]

The post IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT Trailer: Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or Winner is a Gripping Tale of Revenge appeared first on Hammer to Nail.

When it premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Mohammad Rasoulof’s secretly-shot thriller The Seed of the Sacred Fig made headlines. Marking his first project to debut following his exile from his native Iran, after being sentenced to 8 […]

The post THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG Trailer: Mohammad Rasoulof’s Urgent Political Thriller Arrives in November appeared first on Hammer to Nail.

A hidden gem of Iranian cinema has been unearthed and restored in 4K. Bahram Beyzaie’s mythical 1974 sophomore film The Stranger and the Fog was banned in Iran for decades following the Revolution there, but it’s finally being brought back […]

The post THE STRANGER AND THE FOG 4K Restoration Trailer: Hidden Gem of the Iranian New Wave is Unearthed appeared first on Hammer to Nail.

Back in July, legendary Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was arrested for protesting the arrest and imprisonment of his fellow filmmakers and was later sentenced to six years in prison. A few months after his arrest, his newest film No Bears […]

The post NO BEARS Trailer: Jafar Panahi’s Latest Addresses Filmmaking & Oppression appeared first on Hammer to Nail.

The movie presents itself as a seemingly artless video diary, merely a record of whatever random events happened to befall Panahi on that single day of his house arrest, when it is, in fact, a cunningly constructed post-modernist mind-bender in which nothing is accidental or arbitrary.

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The post A Conversation With Hossein Keshavarz and Maryam Azadi (DOG SWEAT) appeared first on Hammer to Nail.

Through talking head interviews and slickly produced, precisely narrated animated scenes, the story of this second stolen election is revealed.

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(Close-up is available on DVD and Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.) “Close-up is present in some way in every film I make. At the least, my standards for the acting, for the screenplay, for people’s inner conflicts, are measured against […]

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The post NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2010 – HTN’s Recommendations appeared first on Hammer to Nail.

(Unfortunately, DVD distribution of A Moment of Innocence has been discontinued, as a result of New Yorker Films’s recent closing. But copies of it can still be found for sale online.) For admirers of the great Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, […]

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