University of Illinois screens Iranian documentary “Foreboding”

November 17, 2024 - 22:13

TEHRAN-The Iranian documentary “Foreboding,” also known as “Molf-e Gand,” directed by Mahmoud Rahmani was screened at the University of Illinois in the U.S. on Saturday.

The event was sponsored by the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, ISNA reported.

“Molf-e Gand” is a 2008 documentary about a character from southern Iran named Mohammad Ghadirzadeh, who, in his mid-forties, takes the director and the audience to the world of his seven-year childhood and the beginning of the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran.

With his beautiful power of expression, he turns his bitter sweet memories into eye-catching images which form and move before the eyes of the viewers.

The audience can sense his struggle to overcome the insurmountable obstacle between authentic experience and its aesthetic reproduction. In his office at his desk, Mohammad, a gifted storyteller, recounts his traumatic childhood memories of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War and reveals the eerie power of his foreboding. Gestures and vocalisations conjure up the atmosphere of a childhood spent in the midst of a hail of bombs; a pencil takes the place of an approaching missile.

The documentary is a 53-minute uninterrupted view and is considered the longest shot sequence in the history of Iranian documentary cinema. This movie won the special prize of the jury of the Belgian Millennium Festival in Brussels and succeeded in participating in the main part of the 7th Nuremberg International Human Rights Festival.

SS/SAB