(Ein augenblick, freiheit)
Austria/France/Turkey 2008. Director: Arash T. Riahi
Cast: Navid Akhavan, Pourya Mahyari, Ezgi AsaroĞlu, Elika Bozorgi, Sina Saba
Just announced as Austria’s official Foreign Language Film submission to the upcoming Oscars, For a Moment, Freedom, the assured first dramatic feature by Iranian-Austrian documentary filmmaker Arash T. Riahi, has won a multitude of prizes on the international festival circuit, including Best First Feature honours at Montreal in 2008. Mixing humour and harrowing drama, and inspired by the director’s own experiences (he and his family fled Iran for Austria when he was nine), the film chronicles, in three separate stories, the plight of Iranian and Iraqi refugees caught up in Turkey while attempting to flee to the West. In the main tale, two young men sneak their two young cousins out of Iran and hope to reunite them with their parents in Austria. In another, a family makes a perilous journey across the mountains by foot. In the third, an Iranian opposition supporter and a Kurdish-Iraqi teacher become friends in a refugee hotel in Ankara. “A deserved winner of the top first-feature prize at Montreal . . . A smooth balance of realism, polish, warmth, suspense, humor and tragedy . . . The bittersweet final effect is quite moving” (Dennis Harvey, Variety). Colour, Digibeta (PAL) video, in English, Turkish, and Farsi with English subtitles. 110 mins.
(Mala Moskwa)
Poland 2008. Director: Waldemar Krzystek
Cast: Svetlana Khodchenkova, Leslaw Zurek, Dmitri Ulyanov, Elena Leszczynska, Artem Tkachenko
Writer-director Waldemar Krzystek’s well-acted, highly-polished drama tackles the previously taboo topic of the Soviet forces that were stationed in Poland for decades after the Second World War. Little Moscow is set in the 1960s in the southwestern Polish city of Legnica, where beautiful Vera (Svetlana Khodchenkova) is newly arrived with her husband Yuri (Dmitri Ulyanov), a young Russian pilot and failed astronaut. Vera takes an interest in Polish language, poetry and music. At a Polish-Soviet “friendship song contest,” she meets attractive Michal (Leslaw Zurek), a Polish lieutenant and musician. Vera is unable to stop herself from falling in love with the dashing young Pole, and a politically dangerous love affair ensues. The film won top honours at Poland’s national Gdynia film festival; Khodchenkova took the festival’s Best Actress prize. “A smoothly produced period melodrama . . . delving into a period of Eastern bloc history not previously exploited by popular cinema . . . An affecting portrait of the tension-filled Soviet-Polish ‘friendship’ of the times” (Alissa Simon, Variety). Colour, 35mm, in Polish and Russian with English subtitles. 114 mins.
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MONDAY, DEC. 07 – 7:00 PM
