Babak Payami

Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States and Europe, based on his experience as a critic.

A vampire seeks out an artist to paint her a portrait so that she can see her image for the first time.

A little boy, Iqbal, is kidnapped by a carpet dealer who forces him to work in his workshop. With no fear or reproach, he will do everything he can to save himself and his unfortunate friends.

A female election agent and a gun-toting soldier try to collect votes among the local islanders with mixed success.

On January 8, 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 went down as it was leaving Iranian air space. All 176 people on board were killed, many of them Iranian Canadians. For weeks Iranian authorities vociferously denied responsibility, but foreign governments and agencies were certain the plane was shot down by Iranian military, a fact Iran’s government eventually admitted. There were no answers as to why the plane was fired on or even why it was allowed to take off, since hostilities had broken out in the region in preceding days.

In an unnamed country in a small village the young local executioner is carrying out the execution of three people on the orders of the outside hard core cleric, Hadji. After the first two are shot, he is told to stop, because Hadji believes that executing the young women will send the young virgin to heaven. Instead Hadji orders the young executioner to marry and deflower the virgin, so she will end up in hell after her execution. This is the start of the executioner's crisis of faith.

An inevitable meeting between a man and a woman lead to a bond and a relationship between them which has an unexpected ending for both of them.