BARAN director: Majid Majidi (Iran 2001)
THE JURIES STATEMENTS
The Oslo Films from the South Award
A unanimous and enthusiastic jury has decided that this year's
festival
winner is the Iranian director Majid Majidi's film "Baran".
Majidi has
previously made four feature films, including the award winning
"The
Colour of Paradise" and "Father", and he belongs
to the circle of
groundbreaking Iranian filmmakers making such an impression on
the world.
"Baran" is a formally assured, beautiful and sensitive
film about love.
The story is told in the contrast between the low-key and the
loaded,
finding its expression, like Bresson, in the everyday, the concrete,
through objects: A smoking cup of tea, a black hair grip, a comb
through
the hair, a footprint in the earth.
The outer framework of the film is a construction site in Iran
at which
illegal Afghan refugees are forced to hide every time the authorities
turn
up. It is a film about loss of identity but also about how identity
is
created and rediscovered through glances, conversations and meetings.
It
is with good reason that critics have compared Majidi's films
with the
European neorealism: "Baran" springs from a political
reality and a
political necessity. The director has stated that "Art, contrary
to
politics, can be the best language to say something about civilisations
today". The film "Baran" is a luminous example
of this.
The Jury
Linn Ullmann (Jury Leader)
Dag Alveberg
Nicolaj Frobenius