Pedar (1996)

Director:

Majid Majidi

Writers:

Majid Majidi (writer)
Mehdi Shojai (writer)

Release Date:

10 February 1999 (France)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Mehrollah is a 14-year-old boy who is forced to find a job to support his family after his father dies. He travels to the southern parts of Iran, looking for work. Upon his return to his hometown, he notices certain changes in his family. |

Plot Keywords:

Family

Awards:

7 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Hossein Abedini	...	Mehrollah's friend
Mohammad Kasebi	...	Father
Parivash Nazarieh	...	Mother
Hassan Sadeghi	...	Mehrollah

Also Known As:

The Father
Père, Le (France) [fr]
Pai, O (Portugal) [pt]
Pateras, O (Greece) (festival title) [el]

Runtime:

96 min

Country:

Iran

Language:

Persian

Color:

Color

Certification:

Argentina:13 | Chile:14 | France:U

Company:

Center of Documentary & Experimental Cinema

Great movie from Iran

Directed by Majid Majidi, who would later helm the better known Children of Heaven, this Iranian film is set in a working class milieu, and it tells the story of a teenage boy, who after his father is killed in a traffic accident, has to leave school and start working in order to support his family. He is proud of being, at such a young age, the person bringing the bread to his poor family. But things change when his widowed mother marries a police officer. He regards this as a double betrayal, and he tries to make life for his family impossible. After putting his two young sisters in jeopardy (in a domestic oven, in one of the film's best scenes), he flees to a port city. The policeman follows him, and in the road back they found themselves in the desert, in a final chase scene that is among the best thing I ever saw. Eventually, and in extremis, adoptive father and son reconciles. Perhaps the best thing of the movie is the portrayal of the policeman. His manners are a bit rough and unpolished, but in his heart he is a good man; it would have been much easier for the film to portray him as a monster, but happily this was avoided. Another triumph for the humanistic Iranian cinema that surprised the movie-watching world in the 1990s (and which sadly, right now, seems to be going through a bad time, hurt by renewed censorship in the Islamic republic).