At 5 in afternoon by Samira Makhmalbaf
At 5 in afternoon
(Panj-e Asr)
http://www.makhmalbaf.com/movies.php?m=34
Samira Makhmalbaf (Director) & Agheleh Rezaie (actress)
2003
Made in Iran/France
Samira Makhmalbaf (Director)
Mohsen Makhmalbaf/Samira Makhmalbaf (Writers)
Actors:
Agheleh Rezaie as Noqreh
Abdolgani Yousefrazi as Father
Razi Mohebi as Poet
Marzieh Amiri as Leylomah
This is Samira Makhmalbaf's fourth movie.
Movies:
At 5 in afternoon (2003)
11,09,01 September 11 (2002)
Blackboards (2001)
The Apple (1998)
About the Director
She is a 23 years old daughter of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, old time Iranian director. She is an awardwining director of many International festivals.
Samira Makhmalbaf
http://www.makhmalbaf.com/persons.php?p=4
The daughter of famed Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira Makhmalbaf has become -- at an astonishingly young age -- one of the world's most lauded directors in her own right. At the age of 18, she became the youngest director ever invited to the Cannes Film Festival for her film The Apple (1998). Two years later, she became the youngest director ever to win the jury prize at Cannes for Blackboards, a feat she repeated in 2003 with At Five in the Afternoon. Makhmalbaf made her movie debut at a very early age, acting in her father's film The Cyclist when she was just seven-years-old. At 14, claiming that her instructors had nothing more to teach her, she quit school and began learning the craft of filmmaking from her father, who established the Makhmalbaf Film House, a sort of family-run film school and production company that has produced films not only by Samira, but her mother Marzieh Meshkini (The Day I Became a Woman), her brother Maysam, and her younger sister Hana, each of whom have made video documentaries about Samira's filmmaking activities. Makhmalbaf's films combine a deep concern for social justice with a poetic style reminiscent of her father's work. Her debut feature, The Apple, was based on the true story of two developmentally disabled girls who were kept cooped up in their tiny Tehran home for the first 12 years of their lives, and used actual family members to play themselves. It was invited to more than 100 film festivals and screened in over 30 countries. Makhmalbaf continued her success with Blackboards, which addresses the condition of Iran's Kurdish population through the adventures of two itinerant teachers. She made history again in 2003 with At Five in the Afternoon, the first film made in post-Taliban Afghanistan. A fixture at film festivals worldwide both as a juror and participant, Makhmalbaf has been both an outspoken political provocateur and a deeply talented filmmaker.
About The movie
At 5 in the afternoon
In "At Five in the Afternoon", we follow the fortunes of a young woman in Afghanistan and her family. Nogreh is caught between two worlds. On the one hand, she attends a school where the teacher encourages girls to become doctors, engineers and even President. At the same time, Nogreh must wait until she steps out of her father's home before she lifts the veil of her burka and trades flat-soled shoes for high heels.
Nogreh is a very idealistic and ambitious young woman who emulates Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and dreams of being President of her own country some day. Yet she has been kept in a state of childlike naivety and ignorance about politics at home and abroad, due to the teachings of the Koran, Shariah (Islamic law) and the Taliban.
It is exciting to hear the young girls debate the status of women in their country. But the film is also sympathetic and understanding toward the old Afghanistan, symbolized by Nogreh's father. He bewails that "Blasphemy has overrun the city" and the world, as he knew it, has ceased to exist. To add pathos to the situation, he feels he can confide his feelings only to a dumb animal -- his donkey, who "knows nothing but hay".
The film's title echoes a recurring verse from Federico Garcia Lorca's poem, "Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejia", about the goring of a bullfighter. Like Lorca's poem, "At Five in the Afternoon" is clouded over by a somber atmosphere of tragedy, death and despair. Yet the film remains remarkable for its astonishingly hopeful -- and indeed radical and revolutionary -- vision of hope for Afghanistan and indeed all of the Muslim & Arab world.
Links
More info
http://www.makhmalbaf.com/
http://www.makhmalbaf.com/persons.php?p=4
See the movie on Sundance Channel
http://iranpoliticsclub.net/club/viewtopic.php?t=167