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At Five in the Afternoon |
| ORIGINAL TITLE : Panj é asr |
| DIRECTOR : Samira Makhmalbaf |
| CAST : Agheleh Rezaie, Abdolgani Yousefrazi, Razi Mohebi, Marzieh Amiri ... |
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WRITER : Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira Makhmalbaf |
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PRODUCER : Mohsen Makhmalbaf |
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COMPOSER : Mohammad Reza Darvishi |
| STUDIO : Makhmalbaf Film House |
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DISTRIBUTOR : Frenetic Films |
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RUNTIME : 1 hour 46 minutes |
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LANGUAGE : Afrikaans, Farsi, Kurdish |
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September 3, 2003 |
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 Afghanistan: after the Taliban's fall, schools are re-opening for girls...
One of the girls wants to become President of the Republic...
A 20 year-old woman (Rezaie) defies her father (Yousefrazi) and attends a secular school in Kabul, where she announces her ambition to become President of Afghanistan. A refugee poet (Mohebi), returning from Pakistan, encourages her but, inevitably, she has to toe the patriarchal line. |
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 The film won the Price of the Jury at Cannes this year. This is not the first one for director Samira Makhmalbaf 23 years old who already won the very same price for her film "Le Tableau Noir" in 2000. She shots afterwards one of the episodes of 11'09'01 (Venis Film Festival - in competition).
Samira Makhmalbaf : “I didn't want to put it in the political way. I think, as an author and filmmaker, I have to serve as a representative of nations, people, human beings living in a nation, not the politicians. Yes, in the movie, they are talking about politics and the main character wants to become President. But, because I couldn't tolerate it that much, I chose to write the character of a boy who loves poetry and who doesn't like politics because it doesn't change anything for him. (...) When my father shot Kandahar, everyone asked him why he chose to talk about such an insignificant country. I wanted to focus on the situation in Afghanistan (i.e., after the fall of the Taliban regime). I don't think it is possible through television and satellites. We saw the Americans liberating Afghanistan, but reality is far different from what was shown on TV. I tried to better capture the situation of men and women living in that country. (...) The main character of the film is a woman. It was very hard to find an actress to interpret her, because Afghan women didn't want to show their faces. Their living conditions have improved since 2002, but they are still afraid that the Taliban will return. Besides, not showing themselves is part of their culture.” |
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Fred's review |
posted on
July 30, 2005 |
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Instructive |
| The movie is good in general but heavy and very slow to develop but doesn’t pretend to be the opposite. This is of course a politic film trying to correct the eventual mistakes and misinformation spreaded by politic and the media about the situation in Afghanistan. Through several monologues and reflections from every character, the movie exposes us a vision from another point of view of the situation and the opinion of the Afghanistan people. It's far from being uninteresting to be explained clearly and quietly how things are perceived from the inside of the country! |
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| Article © 2008 Cinesia.NET |
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Pascal's review |
posted on
July 30, 2005 |
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Historically interesting |
| It’s always difficult do judge so particular films. Imprint of an unquestionable pessimism and a foggy morality, it has neither real begin nor end. It would better look like a picture of the Afghan society after the criminal attempts of New York and the American reprisals’ bombardments than a cinematographic work trying to show a precise situation, undergoing an evolution, supported by a structured scenario. However, the film is interesting, witness of a society at a special moment of its history. |
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| Article © 2008 Cinesia.NET |
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| FILMING LOCATION : Afghanistan |
| SOUND MIX : Mono | COLOR : Color |
| CINEMATOGRAPHY : Ebrahim Ghafori |
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