A Dragon Arrives

press release: A surrealist film set on the island of Qeshm in the Strait of Hormuz, in 1965, in the aftermath of the assassination of Iranian Prime Minister Hassan Ali Mansour.

press release: The UW-Madison’s Persian Student Society, in collaboration with the Wisconsin Union Directorate Film Committee is proud to present the first Wisconsin Iranian Film Festival, directed and programmed by Hamidreza Nassiri, a PhD student in film at UW-Madison. This festival, sponsored by the Middle East Studies Program and Gofundme donors, will take place at the Marquee Theater located in Union South, and will run starting April 15 until April 23.

During the course of two weekends, we will be screening films that showcase Iranian films of different styles and genres, with the intention of sharing diverse aspects of Iran and its cinema and culture with the Madison community and redefining what Iranian cinema represents for viewers abroad. Among the films we will be screening are I’m Not Angry! (2014) by Reza Dormishian – a festival hit that has been banned in Iran for three years; The Salesman (2016) by Asghar Farhadi – the 2017 Academy Award Winner for the Best Foreign-Language Film (both on April 15th); and Downpour (1972), a 4K restoration of an Iranian New-Wave film by Bahram Bayzai (on April 23rd). This restoration is done by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation.

There is also a special program on April 16h as a tribute to Abbas Kiarostami, with a screening of his last film, Take Me Home (2016) and a documentary on him, 76 Minutes and 15 Seconds With Kiarostami (2016). Other films include a mixed-genre film, A Dragon Arrives! (2016) and the US premiere of a female-directed fantasy drama, Breath (2016), both on April 22nd.

All the screenings will be free and open to the general public.