Celebration of Iranian Cinema in Orange County

Join us for the 4th Annual CELEBRATION OF IRANIAN CINEMA in Orange County at the University of California, Irvine September 7-8, 2019. In collaboration with the Jordan Center for Persian Studies, UCI. Special thanks to our co-presenter: The UCLA Film & Televisions Archives.

General Admission: $12 per screening
VIP Package: $75
VIP Package includes admission to all films + invitation to the VIP reception on opening night.

All films presented in Persian with English subtitles.

Schedule of Films:

Saturday September 7, 4:00 PM
HENDI & HORMOZ
Rugged and delicate beauty exist side-by-side on the red sand island of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf where 13-year-old Hendi is married off to the 16-year-old Hormoz on his promise of a job at the local mine. When the job falls through, the young couple must struggle to make their way against difficult odds in a land as spellbinding as it is unforgiving.
Director: Abbas Amini
Screenwriter: Hossein Farrokhzadeh, A. Amini
Cast: Hamed Alipour, Zohreh Eslam, Asma Daneh-chin

Saturday September 7, 7:00 PM
SHEEPLE (Maghz-haye Koochak Zang-Zadeh)
Navid Mohammadzadeh stars as the slow-witted, grasping brother of Shakur (Aslani), a meth dealer and procurer who acts as reigning patriarch for both their impoverished neighborhood and their highly dysfunctional family. When rumors about their sister are exposed, a violent, domestic power struggle breaks into the open. Writer-director Hooman Seyedi doesn’t pull any punches in this sordid tale of corruption that culminates in one of the best action set pieces in contemporary Iranian cinema.
Director/Screenwriter: Hooman Seyedi
Cast: Navid Mohammadzadeh, Farhad Aslani, Farid Sajjadi Hosseini

Sunday September 8, 4:00 PM
BEFORE SUMMER ENDS
Director Maryam Goormaghtigh weaves a most beguiling blend of fiction and non-fiction in this semi-documentary feature about a trio of Iranian ex-pat bros who take a road trip through the shimmering French countryside before one of their own returns to Iran. The expected riffs on male obsessions—women, partying, women—come finer-edged with melancholy, regret and loneliness as the friends also reflect on their lives in self-imposed exile.
Director: Maryam Goormaghtigh
Cast: Arash, Ashkan, Hossein

Sunday September 8, 7:00 PM
TEHRAN, CITY OF LOVE
Three lonely hearts—a bodybuilder, a receptionist and a religious singer—navigate the chilly waters of romance in an alienating urban landscape that puts the irony in the title of writer-director Ali Jaberansari’s second feature. Jaberansari’s deadpan humor and a wry visual style make this an offbeat romantic comedy that suggests it's the absurdity of pursuing love, not its triumphs, that really makes us human.
Director: Ali Jaberansari
Screenwriter: A. Jaberansari, Maryam Najafi
Cast: Forough Ghajabegli, Mehdi Saki, Amir Hessam Bakhtiar