Navid Mohammadzadeh: Last News

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent LILLE, France — Headed by a commanding performance from Navid Mohammadzadeh, superbly shot and packing arguably the best opening scene of any series in Series Mania main competition, Navid Javidi’s “The Actor” won the Grand Prize at Series Mania on Friday night. The top Series Mania award for the “The Actor” also proves vindication for the Festival which this year has broadened its geographical reach in an effort to discover new narrative modes and styles. Consistently subordinating narrative to mood, “The Actor” certainly wins on that score. Main scribe John Kåre Raake (“The Quake”) and co-scribe Linn-Jeanethe Kyed (“Bø”) scooped best writing for “The Fortress,” a banner upcoming Viaplay title produced by Norway’s Maipo Film and sold by TrustNordisk, which delivers a telling political cautionary tale for our times, a chic isolationist parable thriller set in an alternative Norway which has built a wall to keep foreigners out. When a virus strikes, it becomes a prison.

Ben Croll For writers of hardboiled fiction, the private eye could act as a conduit, an unmoored guide moving freely across social ranks and situations. For director Nima Javidi – whose new series “The Actor” is the first Iranian production to premiere in competition at Series Mania – the thespian might play a similar role. “Shakespeare said that all the world’s a stage,” Javidi tells Variety. “And that all the men and women are merely players, assuming different roles depending on their situations and what they want to achieve. I thought it was fascinating [to put performers in those private detective roles and have them], overcome obstacles, solve problems, and save themselves and others from difficulties by using their acting abilities.”

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Films Boutique has closed a flurry of deals on “Subtraction,” Mani Haghighi’s Iranian noir thriller which world premiered at Toronto in the competition Platform section. The Berlin-based company has closed deals in France (Diaphana in association with Kinovista), Russia and CIS (A One), Canada (Films We Like), Ex-Yugoslavia (MCF Megacom), Middle East (Fron Row), Poland (Mayfly), Taiwan (Proview Ent.), Australia and New Zealand (Vendetta), Switzerland (Trigon) and Benelux (September Films). The movie is headlined by Taraneh Alidoosti, the Iranian star of “The Salesman” and “Leila’s Brothers” and Navid Mohammadzadeh (“Leila’s Brothers”). Both Haghighi and Alidoosti have recently been targeted by Iranian authorities. Alidoosti was temporarily arrested, while Haghighi had his passport confiscated as he was about to board a flight to attend the BFI London Film Festival. 

Alissa Simon Film Critic Overline: Hed: By Alissa Simon “Subtraction,” from idiosyncratic Iranian helmer-writer Mani Haghighi (“Men at Work,” “Modest Reception,” “A Dragon Arrives!”) is a tense Hitchcockian thriller set in Tehran, where a heavy, non-stop rainfall signals a lingering malaise. There, a young couple come across their doppelgängers. The film premiered at the Toronto festival. The idea for the plot grew out of the helmer’s long-ago trip to Southwest Iran to look at places where the Iran-Iraq war took place.

Jessica Kiang Nobody emerges unscathed — least of all the audience — from Vahid Jalilvand’s highly effective, deeply unpleasant “Beyond the Wall,” a morbidly violent allegory for the effects of state-sponsored trauma on the individual that places contemporary Iranian society somewhere on the map between the sixth and seventh circles of hell. A strange combination of intricate, almost sci-fi-inflected psychological thriller, splenetic social-breakdown broadside and two-hander (torture) chamber drama, it is an exercise in bravura filmmaking applied to a story so relentlessly grim you might wish it were a little less well-made, giving you an excuse to look away. In his 2017 film “No Date No Signature” (which won Best Director and Best Actor in Venice’s Horizons sidebar), Jalilvand pictured a stratified society teetering on the edge of legality and morality; here, however, it has toppled entirely into the abyss. The only way is down, and the filmmaker is bringing you with it.