When I spoke with Asghar Farhadi during the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 14, 2016 about THE SALESMAN, one of us (me) fully anticipated that it, like his Oscar™-winning film A SEPARATION, would be nominated for an Oscar™. Neither of us could have anticipated that when it was, in fact, nominated, Farhadi would not… Read More »
ZERO DAYS — Alex Gibney, Eric Chien & Liam O’Murchu
Liam O’Murchu was the first person at Symantec to see the STUXnet code, and, as he told me when we talked on May 11, 2016, red flags went off about the elegant coding and suspicious dearth of bugs. I was interviewing him along with his colleague, Eric Chien and with Alex Gibney, the documentarian who… Read More »
A SEPARATION
With A SEPARATION, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi has taken the most ordinary of stories, played out by the most ordinary of people, and created an extraordinary work about the tangential relationship between justice and the law, honesty and truth. How good intentions can go horribly wrong, and because of them, the most considered, logical lie… Read More »
DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE
The subject matter of this intimate documentary belies its breezy title, a title imposed, of course, by the commissioning editors with an eye towards its marketing potential. Made by Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, it shows the casual brutality inflicted upon women in a country that views independent females with suspicion and, perhaps, even fear. Mir… Read More »
Marjane Satrapi Serves CHICKEN WITH PLUMS
When I spoke with Marjane Satrapi on April 30, 2012, one of the many questions I had for her was why she used live-action instead of animation when she adapted CHICKEN WITH PLUMS from her graphic novel of the same name. Her previous film, PERSEPOLIS, was also adapted from her graphic novel, but echoed its distinctive… Read More »
Marjane Satrapi Creates PERSEPOLIS
When I talked with Marjane Satrapi on December 12, 2007, the national news was full of the latest example of gun violence in the United States. Before getting down to talking about PERSEPOLIS, based on her autobiographical graphic novel of the same name, she asked me why the pundits were talking about the shooter’s psychology… Read More »
Maryam Keshavarz & Reza Sixo Safai and CIRCUMSTANCE
Maryam Keshavarz and Rexa Sixo Safai knew that making a film that was critical of the repressive regime running Iran would have repercussions, Both have family still living there that they might not be able to see again soon. When I spoke with them on May 3, 2011, that was the first thing I wanted… Read More »