#Behtash Sanaeeha

[gael-garcia]

My Favourite Cake (2024)

[chez-mimich]

IL MIO GIARDINO PERSIANO

Immaginate una situazione in cui mostrare i capelli o avere un amore sia vietato o comunque moralmente non accettabile. Fate fatica ad immaginarvela? Non credo, poiché ancora oggi, in molti luoghi del mondo, per una donna mostrare i capelli è proibito e spesso è anche deplorevole avere una compagnia maschile. Prima che questo accada anche nel nostro mondo, e non sorridete, perché alcuni inquietanti prodromi ci sono già e sono sotto gli occhi di tutti, quindi, prima che questo avvenga, conviene non solo avere la capacità di indignarsi, ma avere anche quella di dire no, di ribellarsi. Ce lo ricorda con una minimale, soave delicatezza un gioiellino di film di due registi iraniani, Maryam Moghaddam e Behtash Sanaeeha con il loro “Keyke Mahboobe Man”, ovvero “Il mio giardino persiano”. In concorso alla “Berlinale 2024”, dove il film non è potuto essere presentato dai suoi autori, per il semplice motivo che ad entrambi il governo di Tehran aveva ritirato il passaporto facendo pensare ad un film dai contenuti sconvolgenti. Si tratta invece di una narrazione quasi domestica che racconta della vita piatta e grigia di Mahin (interpretata da Lily Farhadpour), donna settantenne di estrazione borghese, che vive sola nella sua casa con un grande giardino nella periferia di Tehran. Una vita fatta di abitudini quotidiane, sempre uguali, come la sporadica frequentazione di un gruppo di anziane amiche e pochissimo altro. La vita di Mahin, si anima solo quando incontra Faramarz, un taxista anch’esso settantenne. Ma quando l’invadenza pervasiva di un regime politico toglie qualsiasi libertà, tutto diventa difficile e nello stesso tempo trasgressivo. Due esseri umani che si amano sotto un regime oppressivo, potrebbero ricordare tante altre vicende cinematografiche, ma per grazia e levità Mahin e Faramaz mi hanno ricordato due altri amanti occasionali, oppressi da un regime spaventoso, Antonietta e Gabriele, i protagonisti di “Una giornata particolare” capolavoro di Ettore Scola del 1977. Certo la casa di Mahin è più intima del razionalista (e brutalista) Palazzo Federici a Roma, ma bisogna pur convenire che l’oppressione del regime talebano non è molto diversa da quella del regime fascista del film di Scola. Un film probabilmente non tanto semplice da intercettare nelle sale cinematografiche, ma che merita di essere visto.

[oldfilmsflicker]

new-to-me #512 - My Favourite Cake

[mnic313]

My Favourite Cake.

[pacingmusings]

Seen in 2024:

Ballad of a White Cow (Behtash Sanaeeha & Maryam Moqadam), 2020

[nuovocparadiso]

کیک محبوب من: My favourite cake (2024).

Dir. Maryam Moghaddam, Behtash Sanaeeha.

[whileiamdying]

My Favourite Cake review – charming portrayal of a 70-year-old Iranian’s appetite for romance

⭑⭑⭑⭑⭑

Heroine Mahin (Lily Farhadpour) is fiercely determined to revitalise her mundane existence and taste a better life

As well as everything else, this wonderfully sweet and funny film will contribute to the debate about whether repressive regimes are the nursery of artistic greatness. The Iranian government has prevented the film’s two directors, Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, from travelling to Berlin to attend their own premiere; six months ago, their production offices were raided and computers and hard drives confiscated. But, fortunately, the film-makers had a copy stored in another country, and the film’s gentle humanity is a compelling rebuke to this fatuous, clumsy repression.

The authorities had apparently got wind of scenes in which women show their hair, and do not wear the hijab with enough modesty; the morality police drive around Tehran intimidating them with self-important purpose. The 70-year-old heroine – who wistfully remembers a time when hijabs were not required at all – stands up to these uniformed bullies and rescues a woman from their clutches.

This is Mahin (a lovely performance from Lili Farhadpour), whose story is a meditation on love and loss, loneliness and old age, and on the price at which long-term married happiness is bought. It is a meditation on how women come to terms with the destiny of widowhood, of knowing that they will almost certainly outlive their husbands. Mahin is herself a widow whose daughter and grandchildren live abroad, and her muted existence alone in her apartment is revealed in a series of tremendously composed tableaux. There are FaceTime phone calls with her daughter which somehow never allow for a proper talk. She has difficulty getting to sleep and doesn’t get up before noon. She waters the plants in her garden, goes shopping and occasionally hosts lunches for her female friends, at which the dominant theme is everyone’s various ailments, discussed at hilarious and explicit length.

But the conversation turns to whether it is possible to find romance again at their age. Why not? And so Mahin, without quite admitting it to herself, expands and modifies her aimless daytime schedule with a secret end in view: to meet a man. Mahin hangs out in the bakery queue, at the park, at a fancy hotel coffee shop and finally at a modest restaurant where pensioners’ food vouchers can be redeemed. And she finds herself meeting cute with Faramarz (Esmaeel Mehrabi), a modest, personable single man of her age. He is a cab driver and military veteran, who himself is of Mahin’s independent cast of mind: he got into trouble with joyless authorities for playing a musical instrument in a wedding band.

And so Faramarz and Mahin have their moment together at her apartment, where she offers to bake him her favourite cake. It is a moment of emotional connection for which they have saved up all their thoughts and feelings since becoming single – as if the entirety of their late-life inner existences are now being poured out to each other. There is something quietly magnificent in it. Moments like these in life are poignantly brief – but many never have them at all. It’s a lovely film.

My Favourite Cake screened at the Berlin Film Festival and is in UK cinemas from 13 September.

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: IMustBe Leonardo

IMustBe Leonardo is a Berlin-based songwriter who has been making his oddball songs since around 2016. His latest album, Not To Be Scared of Weekend, is a self-recorded delight, entirely unfettered by commercial considerations — with one song that asks the eternal question, “Why should...you need god…when you have Kim Gordon?” Writing about it, Jennifer Kelly said, “About half the tracks are hand-made rock songs, bolstered by clicky drum tracks and ravaged guitar tones. The other half are the maddest, most surreal campfire songs you ever heard, gently strummed but extremely odd.” Leonardo wrote us one of the nicest — and longest — thank you notes we’ve ever received at Dusted, so of course we asked him for a Listed.

Nina Simone — An Artist's Duty

What she says in these 51 seconds, the way she asks that question at the end — everything is there.

Typhoon — Sympathetic Magic

This album was released in January 2021. Kyle Morton is a poet and a great songwriter. His notes to the album tell all you need to know: “The songs are about people — the space between them and the ordinary, miraculous things that happen there, as we come into contact, imitate each other, leave our marks, lose touch. Being self and other somehow amounting to the same thing.” He played a solo gig in Berlin, on June 17, 2023. I asked him to play my favorite song, “And So What If You Were Right.” He did it. He said it was the first time he played it in public. That was a gift.

Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha — Ballad Of A White Cow

There is almost only love in this movie, and all that love leads only to suffering. It terrifies me to see how often “doing the right thing” and well-intended lies destroy good people’s lives.

Emma Ruth Rundle — Engine of Hell

This album is a pulsing heart in the shape of a songwriter sitting in front of us, playing piano or classical guitar, and singing her story. “I wanted to be close to the listener and be whispering to you. I wanted to be close on an emotional level. Because I wanted to connect with myself on an emotional level, ” she said about this record. It takes courage to do this. It also takes a little bit of courage to stay in front of her and look at her fragile, invincible grace. Sonny Diperri, who recorded and produced this terrific record, is a great sound engineer and a lucky guy.

Christian Petzold — Undine

Art is proof that people can find infinite ways to create beauty, as long as they believe they truly need to love. Undine is a work of art. It not only is a truly original, touching movie about love. It is an act of love, made by people who can’t stand living in a society willing to humiliate and lose it.

Vic Chesnutt — At The Cut

Maybe one day our species will ignore what anguish is, and we will not even be allowed to mention the word. Someone will consider this “progress.” I don't see any progress in not feeling moved by what Vic Chesnutt — and every person involved in those sessions — did in this album.

Aki Kaurismaki — Ariel

I love Kaurismaki's cinema. I’m mentioning Ariel here just because it is probably my favorite... today. (For the record, it contains the best bank robbery scene in the film history.) If I ask myself why I love his movies so much, one reason I can put into words is that all his characters are condemned to the tragic and funny punishment of knowing what truly makes human beings happy. They are such stuff as the Tramp is made on.

This Mortal Coil — Blood

I put this album in my CD player recently, after several years, and started listening to it with the state of mind of someone who’s going to meet an ex-lover and is scared of not feeling anything. I was wrong. It still asks me the same beautiful question: “Did you really think you knew which kind of songs you like?”

Hirokazu Kore-eda — Shoplifters

I see Kore-eda as a sort of photo reporter who goes around and, almost by mistake, takes poetic pictures of fragments of happiness that — tomorrow — will not be there anymore. Laws were supposed to be instruments by which people pursued well-being. This movie shows how society rules are sometimes not ready to handle real life. They can end up killing what they should preserve, and it looks like a frighteningly stupid scenario.

New Pollution — Kiss The System

New Pollution is not just a band — it’s a no-filter attitude. They're the most contemporary group I know. I cannot imagine someone attending a New Pollution gig and not getting captured. There is spontaneity and freedom in everything they do — on stage and online. They keep releasing whatever they record (concerts, demos, soundtracks, studio sessions) and mocking all the show business rules. Nowadays musicians — indie ones more than others — are like bank clerks, each one with their daily plans: x hours of social media, x hours emails to labels, x hours emails to magazines... Music seems to be the last thing you should care about — and you're supposed to be a musician! New Pollution they don't care. “Revolution was your spare time,” they sing. I think Patrick Jessop has an instinctive awareness of how ephemeral existence is and I hope he never loses it.

[randomrichards]

BALLAD OF A WHITE COW:

Mother seeks justice

Husband wrongly convicted

She’ll face Iran gov

[intellectures]

Berlinale 2024: Schmerzhafte Zeiten

Nach fünf Jahren ist die 74. Berlinale auch die letzte von Mariëtte Rissenbeek und Carlo Chatrian. Einst trat das Duo mit dem Auftrag an, das von Dieter Kosslik heillos ��berfrachtete Festival künstlerisch und organisatorisch zu reformieren. Am Ende waren es vor allem die Sparmaßnahmen, die zur Verschlankung des Programms geführt haben, dem auch nach fünf Jahren eine klare Handschrift…

[fistikezmemesi]

[chalkythetalkie]

10 people I'd like to get to know better: tagged by my dear @yamcat!!!

Last song: Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar

Last book: Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector. I didn't read much this past year (really want to rectify that in 2025 tho!) but this one is always a comfort read

Last movie: went to the theater yesterday with my bf and we watched My Favorite Cake, by Iranian directors Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha. These filmmakers are currently paying a high price for their bravery in making this daring movie (arrested under multiple charges, prohibited from work/travel). It a lovely, deeply moving, at times very funny film, and I enjoyed it so much.

Last TV show: i think it was Unorthodox, the Netflix miniseries from 2020. It was alright, but i didn't feel much stirred by it.

Last thing I searched: "Bloom's taxonomy" bc i'm currently on a government scholarship to become a preceptor for future family medicine residents, and the subject of this month's module is andragogy/how to teach adults... honestly it's a pretty heavy workload orz but at least i'm getting paid

Favorite color: i LOVE yellow!!!

Sweet/Savory/Spicy: used to have a huge sweet tooth but lately i'm more of a savory/spicy girl

Relationship status: it'll be my bf and I's 1-year anniversary on February 28th!!

Looking forward to: I'm looking forward to presenting my final paper tomorrow and graduating residency at the end of the month FINALLY 🙌🙌 I'm also moving in with my boyfriend this month, which is very exciting! (his apartment needs a lot of repairs but we'll handle it)

Current obsessions: i've been crocheting a LOT (mainly out of stress but it's all very useful household items that are needed in my new home) and watching so many history documentaries on WWII for some reason

Tagging: anyone who sees it and wants to take part in it!!

[clemencepoles]

Clemence’s Top Ten Films of 2024

No Other Land dir. Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal

My favourite Cake dir. Maryam Moghaddam & Behtash Sanaeeha

All We Imagine as Light dir. Payal Kapadia

Dahomey dir. Mati Diop

In His Own Image dir Thierry de Peretti

Cent Mille Milliards dir. Virgil Vernier

Hard Truths dir. Mike Leigh

Miséricorde dir. Alain Guiraudie

The Fall Guy dir David Leitch

Bird dir. Andrea Arnold

*My diary of 2024 films can be found HERE.

**Notable mentions: 

DJ Mehdi : Made in France dir. Thibaut de Longeville (Not exactly a film, but this 6-part documentary series is definitely one of my favorite watches of the year.)

Good One dir. India Donaldson

[hotnew-pt]

“O Perdão” em exibição no atmosfera m Lisboa #ÚltimasNotícias #lisboa

Hot News Não perca a exibição do filme iraniano “O Perdão” (Ballad of a White Cow) dos realizadores Behtash Sanaeeha e Maryam Moghaddam (Irão, França, 2020), com Maryam Moghaddam, Alireza Sani Far e Pouria Rahimi Sam. Um retrato poderoso de uma mulher na sociedade iraniana atual e que foi selecionado para a Berlinale (Festival Internacional de Cinema de Berlim), Tribeca Film Festival e Stockholm…