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I saw this today.

An amazing adult-oriented autobiographical animated film about a young Iranian girl growing up in Iran and Europe. The film's rather grim at parts but manages to inject a surprisingly healthy dose of humor. The film's look combined with the story makes for a really unique cinematic experience.

Did you read the comics? I'm a big fan of those (though I probably shouldn't have read David B. Epileptic first), and I'm looking forward to seeing this. Here's the trailer, which isn't too inspiring.

I read these books a couple years ago, they were interesting but not what I'd call cinematic.

Steven H wrote:Did you read the comics? I'm a big fan of those (though I probably shouldn't have read David B. Epileptic first), and I'm looking forward to seeing this. Here's the trailer, which isn't too inspiring.

I have not read the comics. The movie caught me by surprise by how good it is though.

I read the first graphic novel, and the movie did quite a good job of capturing - and expanding - the feel of the book. Marjane is a precocious little girl just trying to grow up in places that aren't too good for precocious little girls to be.

I would say the books aren't quite as good at Maus, probably the closest comparison, but the movie may very well make up for that. (I have to think about it a little more.)

And the humor is *great*, even when it leads straight into some hard doses of reality.

Apparently also a crowd pleaser as this won the award for best international film at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

i really loved the comic, and can't wait to see this.

Full trailer.

domino harvey wrote:I read these books a couple years ago, they were interesting but not what I'd call cinematic.

Which is the film's chief problem. The film does very little to justify its spot on the big screen, and its anecdotal structure and slow fades to black (as well as the generally ho-hum quality of the animation, if not the design) seem more like television animation. I didn't gain anything from the film that I didn't already have from the books.

As with the books, the first half of the film, which covers the first book, is a great deal more compelling than the second half, which seems insignificant by comparison.

So, this is subtitled, right? It hasn't been re-dubbed in English, has it?

Correct, the film is in French with white subtitles

An English dub was made with Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Gena Rowlands, Sean Penn (?), and Iggy Pop (?!), but someone from Sony Classics mentioned at the NYFF screening that they had decided to release only the French version theatrically and make the dub an audio option on the dvd. (Although I did see another version of the poster online trumpeting the English-language "voice talent.")

portnoy wrote:

domino harvey wrote:I read these books a couple years ago, they were interesting but not what I'd call cinematic.

Which is the film's chief problem. The film does very little to justify its spot on the big screen, and its anecdotal structure and slow fades to black (as well as the generally ho-hum quality of the animation, if not the design) seem more like television animation. I didn't gain anything from the film that I didn't already have from the books.

As with the books, the first half of the film, which covers the first book, is a great deal more compelling than the second half, which seems insignificant by comparison.

Having just seen the film, I agree about the second half. I did notice some efforts to trim and reform the events in the later half to tighten it up and the music number was a half-hearted attempt to add umph to the final act but really, the little girl with radical parents in constant danger is infinitely more interesting than the boyfriend who cheats.

I don't know about Maus, can see where that comparison comes from, but the anecdotal structure and cartoonish style also recalls Takahata's My Neighbor the Yamadas. To that I'd note that while the raw material is naturally more compelling, Takahata's storytelling is more sure, and he gets as much if not more impact working with less (inherently dramatic material, I mean).

DVD release date: 2008-05-27

I don't know where they get that info...

Saw this tonight and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I wasn't blown away, but (having not read the comic in advance) I though the story was quite compelling and the animation, was simple, effect with some very strong scenes. The only issue I had with the film was that the episodic nature of it didn't really build into a larger narrative arc, leaving the ending kind of limp.

I enjoyed this quite a bit. But something has been bugging me. When Marjane is in Vienna she is watching TV and she watches Letter From an Unknown Woman, but later on she is watching a Japanese film, a woman screams to another "you are not good enough for my son" or something to that effect. I recognise it but can't place it. Any ideas?

A riotous time was had in Tunisia.
After Persepolis was shown on TV a mob attacked, invaded and firebombed the home of the TV station head.
They were upset by the depiction of God as an old bearded dude.
Elections in Tunisia are next week.

In other Iranian film news, Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr has been sentenced to a year in jail and 90 lashes for appearing without a hijab (head covering) in the Iranian-Australian film "My Tehran for Sale," a film about the limits imposed on artists in Iran.
The film was banned in Iran and heavily criticized by the clerics.

Vafamehr's sentence is only the most recent example of the Iranian regime's ongoing crackdown on the entertainment industry.

On September 17, Iran arrested five documentary directors and a producer and distributor. Among them was Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, who was detained at the Tehran airport as he prepared to go to the Toronto Film Festival.

And in December 2010, director Jafar Panahi was arrested. He has been sentenced to six years in prison and was banned from filmmaking and from speaking with the foreign press for 20 years.

Not sure if this was posted from another thread, and slightly off-topic, but: I saw Jafar Panahi's This is Not A Film last Thursday. It must've been filmed around the time of the Japanese tsunami (there was coverage on his tv during part of the film); the date was Persian New Year (and I'm too tired right now to look that up).

Really, really intriguing look on how filmmaking can be in someone's blood and what happens when that (and all physical contact wit the outside world) is cut off suddenly - as well as a snapshot of what's going on with Iranian filmmaking. Fortunately, it's nowhere near as self-indulgent as Kim Ki-Duk's Arirang 2011, filmed at about the same time.

I'm out of the loop as to what's happening in Iran these days, but I'm not sure why the government is suddenly cracking down on the artists that have gotten Iran some very good international press in recent years.

I wonder, though, how smuggling this film out to get more international support for and information about Panahi is going to impact his appeal. His attorney was convinced that the best they could hope for was to get his sentence reduced.

True considering, as Lemmy Caution says, that This Is Not A Film's co-director Mojtaba Mir Tahmaseb was one of six filmmakers recently arrested.

This is even more off-topic, but Yılmaz Güney famously "directed" Yol from a prison cell - in fact, Cahiers du Cinéma controversially insisted on crediting the film's direction to his assistant Şerif Gören, arguing that the director's physical presence on the set should be a minimum requirement to establish authorship.

Mind you, while the Cahiers editors were clearly being polemical at the time, they might not have been wholly wrong - the film that Güney made after he escaped from prison, The Wall, had very little of Yol's subtlety, suggesting that Gören (a distinguished director in his own right, after all) had a fairly considerable creative input into the latter.