Ilan / 2016 / 63 min. / Director: Mohsen MAKHMALBAF
Mohsen MAKHMALBAF’s incisive inquiry into the significance of the 1978 Iranian Revolution, in which he himself was involved. It depicts three eras: prior to the revolution, in which it traces the fates of an anthropologist, and his daughter who works in a hospital’s emergency ward; during the revolution; and its aftermath. The film was first screened in 1990 at the Fajr Film Festival in Teheran with 25 minutes removed by censors, but further censorship led to it being banned from screening altogether, and the negative was confiscated by authorities. From then on, it had been impossible to see this elusive work in Iran, or anywhere else in the world. In recent years, the negative was somehow taken out of Iran and restored in London, enabling its selection as the opening screening in the Classics section of this year’s Venice Film Festival. The original pre-censorship version is said to have been 100 minutes long.
