Tag Archives: ifc center

SPLIT SCREENS FESTIVAL: THE ART & CRAFT OF TELEVISION

Alan Cumming will be at IF Center for Split Screens Festival showing of Instinct

IFC Center unless otherwise noted
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
May 29 – June 3, $12-$17
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.splitscreensfestival.com

We all watch television now in multiple formats, on computers, smartphones, and even, sometimes, on television. But the Split Screens Festival offers something unique: an opportunity to see episodes of your favorite television series on the big screen, followed by discussions with creators, actors, crew members, and critics, moderated by Split Screens co-creative directors Matt Zoller Seitz and Melanie McFarland. The third annual festival takes place May 29 to June 3 at IFC Center, with inside looks at such programs as Russian Doll, Fear the Walking Dead, The Good Place, Better Things, Mr. Robot, and others and will also present Janet Mock with the Vanguard Award for Pose. “At a time when the old boundaries between cinema and television have fallen and everything has become ‘content,’ yet stories of every kind of length and tone and genre are still using cinematic and literary language, a festival of this kind becomes more important than ever,” Zoller Seitz said in a statement. Among the participants at the festival are Alan Cumming, Pamela Adlon, William Jackson Harper, Sanaa Lathan, Christopher Abbott, and many others.

Wednesday, May 29
Inside Russian Doll: A Guided Tour of Time, Space, Death, and Resurrection, Netflix Close-Up with co-creator and co-executive producer Leslye Headland, production designer Michael Bricker, hair department head Marcel Dagenais, editor Todd Downing, costume designer Jenn Rogien, director of photography Chris Teague, and editor Laura Weinberg, 6:45

When They See Us, Netflix premiere screening, guests to be announced, 8:30

Thursday, May 30
Instinct, CBS premiere screening, with actor Alan Cumming, actress Bojana Novakovic, and executive producer Michael Rauch, 7:45

Friday, May 31
Better Things: How Pamela Adlon Makes Life into Art, FX Close-Up with executive producer, writer, director, and actress Pamela Adlon, 6:30

Deadwood: The Movie Viewing Party, HBO special event, SVA Theatre, followed by live video Q&A with star Ian McShane, 7:15

Replay episode of Twilight Zone is part of Split Screens Festival

Saturday, June 1
(S)heroes: Women of Action!, TV Talk with presenters Jessica Aldrich, Delia Harrington, Emmy Potter, Connor Ratliff, and Jamie Velez and critics Caroline Framke, Soraya McDonald, and Sonia Saraiya, 11:30 am

Skip Credits: Critics on Storytelling in the Age of Streaming, TV Talk with critics Caroline Framke, Soraya McDonald, James Poniewozik, and Sonia Saraiya, 2:00

That’s Some Catch: Christopher Abbott in Catch-22, Hulu Close-Up with actor Christopher Abbott, 3:30

Vanguard Award: Janet Mock, with a special screening of Love Is the Message from season 1 of FX’s Pose, with writer, producer, director, and advocate Janet Mock, 5:30

Is It Safe? Sam Esmail on Mr. Robot, Homecoming, and the Paranoid Thriller, Close-Up with Sam Esmail and a screening of Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999), 8:00

Sunday, June 2

Queen Sugar, OWN premiere screening, with actors Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Kofi Siriboe, and Rutina Wesley, showrunner and episode writer Anthony Sparks, and producing director and episode director Cheryl Dunye, 12:30

The Good Place: A Conversation with William Jackson Harper, NBC Close-Up, with actor William Jackson Harper, 2:30

Twilight Zone, CBS All Access screening of Replay episode, with actress Sanaa Lathan and screenwriter Selwyn Seyfu Hinds, 4:00

Warrior, Cinemax premiere screening with executive producer Shannon Lee and creator and executive producer Jonathan Tropper, 6:00

Fear the Walking Dead, AMC premiere screening, with executive producer Scott M. Gimple and others, 8:15

Monday, June 3
The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu premiere screening, 7:00

BARBARA RUBIN & THE EXPLODING NY UNDERGROUND

Documentary explores the fast and furious life of underground filmmaker Barbara Rubin

BARBARA RUBIN & THE EXPLODING NY UNDERGROUND (Chuck Smith, 2018)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, May 24
212-924-7771
junofilms.com
www.ifccenter.com

At the beginning of Chuck Smith’s Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground, which opens May 24 at IFC, author Ara Osterweil discusses the first time she saw Barbara Rubin’s 1963 avant-garde shocker Christmas on Earth. “I remember just watching it and being utterly blown away, really not being able to believe that a film like that even existed. I said, Who made this film? Who is Barbara Rubin?” I felt the same way last fall when I saw the exhibition “The Velvet Underground Experience,” which included a tribute to Rubin by Jonas Mekas as well as a small room where Christmas on Earth was projected. Fifty-five years after its release, after the pill, the sexual revolution, and Stonewall, the film still merits a warning sign, as the daring, provocative sexuality it depicts and the work’s unusual visual style are not for everyone.

The special relationship between Allen Ginsberg and Barbara Rubin is key part of film

Smith traces Rubin’s dramatic life and career through home movies, photographs, letters, archival footage, and more, much of it provided by Mekas, who had saved all the material Rubin shot and the letters they sent to each other, some of which are read in the film. Rubin was born in Cambria Heights in 1945, was institutionalized as a teenager, experienced drug problems, and got a job interning for Mekas at the Film-Makers Cooperative. She made Christmas on Earth when she was only eighteen and quickly became a spark in the downtown community, serving as muse and catalyst, bringing unique people together, and attacking her art with energy and zeal. “She had the most transcendentally beautiful face I’ve ever seen,” author and film critic Amy Taubin says. “She didn’t look like a boy. She didn’t look like a girl. She looked like someone decided to paint an angel.”

Barbara Rubin made Christmas on Earth when she was still a teenager

Rubin and Mekas tied up a projectionist at a Belgian film festival so they could show Jack Smith’s controversial Flaming Creatures; she introduced Andy Warhol to the Velvet Underground; she appeared in one of Warhol’s Screen Tests and in Kiss; she fell in love with Allen Ginsberg and organized an important poetry event in London; she studied Judaism with Bob Dylan. “Barbara embraced underground film with a religious fervor, and she thought that the act of filming something could change the world,” film critic and curator J. Hoberman explains. And then, in a decision just as shocking as the rest of her life, she gave up the freedom and individuality she so coveted to marry a Hasidic Jew, moving to France and starting a family, following the strict precepts of Orthodox Judaism. It’s a twist that would not be believed in a fiction film.

Smith (Forrest Bess: Key to the Riddle) also speaks with Rubin’s fellow filmmakers Wendy Clarke and Stephen Bornstein; her friends Debra Feiner Coddington — the star of Christmas on Earth — and Rosebud Feliu-Pettet; playwright Richard Foreman; Warhol actor Randall Bourscheidt; photographer Gordon Ball; and Rubin’s aunt and cousin, who all share unique stories about her, as if they are describing different people rather than the same woman. Smith, who directed, produced, and edited Barbara Rubin & the Exploding NY Underground, compiles his documentary by mimicking Rubin’s style, employing split screens and superimpositions along with an avant-garde score by Lee Ranaldo and songs by Dylan, the Velvet Underground, John Coltrane, and others. It’s a riveting tale of an extraordinary, seemingly uncontrollable force, a supremely talented woman dealing with mental illness, a central figure in an artistic movement who was gone too soon. Smith will participate in Q&As at the 7:30 show on May 24 with Peter Hale of the Allen Ginsberg Estate and at the 5:30 show on May 27 with Taubin.

THE BRINK

Alison Klayman seeks to reveal the method behind the madness of Stephen Bannon in The Brink

THE BRINK (Alison Klayman, 2019)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, March 29
212-924-7771
www.magpicturesinternational.com
www.ifccenter.com

Near the end of Alison Klayman’s illuminating documentary, The Brink, after a lively debate between Steve Bannon and conservative commentator David Frum, former Goldman Sachs president John Thornton tells Bannon backstage, “To people who don’t know you, you’re totally disarming because you’re sort of charming and kind of, you pick up irony and you’re, they’re kind of shocked that you’re such a quote unquote nice guy.” But what about the people who do know him? In the film, which opens today at IFC, Klayman doesn’t humanize the man considered an evil genius as much as demystify the onetime Trump campaign head and Breitbart News founding member, following him from the fall of 2017, as he is ousted from the White House shortly after the Charlottesville incident, through the midterm elections of the following year. She is embedded as part of his otherwise all-male entourage as he travels around the country and the world, building support for his far-right beliefs, pushing his agenda of “economic nationalism” and raising money for his 501 (c) 4, Citizens of the American Republic.

Klayman (Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, Take Your Pills) is given nearly full access; Bannon only occasionally asks her to leave the room as he meets with such far-right populists as French National Rally Party leaders Jérôme Rivière and Louis Aliot, Belgian People’s Party politician Mischaël Modrikamen and Vlaams Belang Party leader Filip Dewinter, Sweden Democrats member Kent Ekeroth, former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, Italian Minister of Interior Matteo Salvini, Brothers of Italy leader Giorgia Meloni, and other anti-refugee extremists. He sits down with Blackwater founder Erik Prince, visits with Chinese billionaire Miles Kwok, and plans courses of action with Republican strategists, pollsters, and congressional candidates. He particularly enjoys engaging with members of the media who might not necessarily agree with him; he speaks with Devil’s Bargain author and Bloomberg journalist Joshua Green, Fire and Fury writer Michael Wolff, MSNBC’s Ari Melber, and reporters from Politico, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Der Spiegel.

Stephen K. Bannon goes on the road to push his far-right ideology in The Brink

One of the best moments of the film occurs when Guardian journalist Paul Lewis challenges Bannon on issues of globalism and anti-Semitism. Bannon refuses to back down without evincing upset or anger; he relishes controversy, defending himself with a sly smile. He travels to small-town America, showing his documentary Trump @ War at local gatherings, speaking directly to the “deplorables,” exhibiting care and understanding, precisely the kind of thing that Hillary Clinton didn’t do, contributing to her loss of the presidency. The question of Bannon’s sincerity and true purpose hovers in every interaction. Bannon describes his Trump film to Klayman as propaganda, but Klayman then shows us a woman who’s just seen the film praising it because it’s not propaganda. Klayman also captures Bannon raving about the German efficiency that went into building concentration camps, comparing himself to Leni Riefenstahl, supporting Roy Moore’s Senate candidacy, and continually posing for pictures with couples, putting the woman in the center and saying, “a rose between two thorns.”

The Brink was made because producer Marie Therese Guirgis (On Her Shoulders, The Loneliest Planet), the younger sister of writer-director Stephen Adly Guirgis, used to work with Bannon at an independent film distribution company, and she became disturbed by his far-right activity. As he gained power, the left-wing Guirgis would email him, calling him out accusingly, but he would always reply in a civil tone. On her fourth request to make a film about him, he finally relented, agreeing to give Guirgis and Klayman complete control over the project. The two progressive women are not shy about where they stand on the issues and about Bannon’s beliefs; Klayman, who did not have a crew for the shoot — she did the cinematography and the sound and served as coeditor and producer — includes news footage that is not particularly favorable to Bannon, and she does not attempt to humanize him so much as depict him as a driven, determined man who is a master manipulator. The title of the film also reveals their thoughts about Bannon, coming from an Abraham Lincoln quote about being “on the brink of destruction.” When Bannon, who prefers wearing at least two shirts all the time, lets his guard down, as he does on several occasions, he turns into a nasty, self-obsessed figure who makes rash, mean-spirited decisions and is not as pleasant as he likes himself to appear. Of course, it’s impossible to know when Bannon is playing Klayman, using the documentary to further his own ideology. But in taming the beast, Klayman also reveals Bannon’s fascinating methods, something that liberals around the world should study and learn from. Klayman will be at IFC for Q&As with investigative journalist Azmat Khan on March 29 at 7:15 and March 30 at 2:45, with Alissa Wilkinson of VOX on March 30 at 5:00, and on April 1 at 7:15.

WORKING WOMAN

Liron Ben Shlush is powerful as a married mother of three reentering the job market and facing sexual harassment in Working Woman

WORKING WOMAN (ISHA OVEDET) (אשה עובדת) (Michal Aviad, 2018)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Wednesday, March 27
212-924-7771
zeitgeistfilms.com
www.ifccenter.com

Liron Ben Shlush gives a heart-wrenching performance as a mother reentering the work force in Israeli feminist director Michal Aviad’s second fiction film, Working Woman. Ben Shlush is Orna, who has three young children and gets a job to help support the family while her husband, Ofer (Oshri Cohen), gets his struggling new restaurant off the ground. She takes a position with her former army commander, Benny (Menashe Noy), a high-powered real estate developer. Despite her lack of experience, Orna is an instant success as a savvy salesperson, pushing exclusive new beachfront luxury property. Orna is dismayed when Benny unexpectedly kisses her against her wishes, but when he continues his advances even as she shoves him away, she finds herself in an old, all-too-common situation, forced to decide whether she controls her body or her boss does; since her body is basically a commodity in this society, her decision is financial as well, as it will affect both her career and her family.

Orna (Liron Ben Shlush) has to keep looking over her shoulder, watching out for her predatory boss, Benny (Menashe Noy), in Michal Aviad’s second fiction film

Written before the #MeToo movement began by longtime documentarian Aviad (Jenny & Jenny, Invisible) with Sharon Azulay Eyal and Michal Vinik, Working Woman tells a familiar story but provides unique perspective. Although Orna does nothing to encourage Benny, she begins questioning whether his creepy attraction to her is her fault regardless, that she is not doing enough to keep him away from her. She is surrounded by wealth — Benny is a rich man, living in a large, fancy home with his wife, Sari (Dorit Lev-Ari), and Orna spends her days trying to sell luxury apartments to the one percent, including the Benayouns (Gilles Ben-David and Corinne Hayat), a French couple who might bring a small community with them — but she and Ofer, a proud man who wants no help, were having financial difficulties prior to her job. If she were to quit, her family would suffer, something she will not allow to happen even as she considers the cost. Aviad handles the conflict with a profound sensitivity and deep understanding, providing no easy answers when it comes to sexual harassment. Cinematographer Daniel Miller composes long shots that follow Ben Shlush’s (Next to Her, Road 40 South) yearning, expressive eyes as she searches for a way out, a place where she can be a wife and a mother with a good full-time job. Key scenes feature subtleties that emphasize the power a male boss can hold over a female employee in so many ways that go beyond forcible contact. Working Woman opens at IFC on March 27; Aviad will be at the Greenwich Village theater for Q&As at the 7:45 screenings on March 27 and 30.

WHAT THE FEST!?

Larry Fesssendens Depraved kicks off outrageous film festival at IFC Center

Larry Fessenden’s Depraved kicks off outrageous film festival at IFC Center

IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
March 20-24
212-924-7771
www.whatthefestnyc.com
www.ifccenter.com

The second annual What the Fest!? is a five-day extravaganza of crazy films that will have you muttering out loud, “What the f!?” Held at IFC Center, the festival opens March 20 with the world premiere of indie horror maestro Larry Fessenden’s creepy Depraved, a modern-day Frankenstein tale set in New York City. Fessenden, who has made such underground faves as Habit, Wendigo, and The Last Winter, will participate in a postscreening Q&A with producers Jenn Wexler and Chadd Harbold and cast members, while the video presentation Frankenstein Origins will precede the movie. That same night, the New York City premiere of Crazy Pictures’ Swedish thriller The Unthinkable will be preceded by Sydney Clara Brafman’s one-minute short The Only Thing I Love More Than You Is Ranch Dressing and a Q&A with Professor Anna Maria Bounds about the coming New York apocalypse.

The second annual What the Fest!? features the world premiere of the restoration of the 1970 documentary Satanis:

The second annual What the Fest!? features the world premiere of the restoration of the utterly strange 1970 documentary Satanis: The Devil’s Mass

Among the other bizarro highlights are Pollyanna McIntosh’s Darlin’, preceded with a tribute to late horror writer Jack Ketchum by Douglas E. Winter; Shinichiro Ueda’s One Cut of the Dead, followed by a panel discussion on making zombie flicks; Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe’s suburban comedy Greener Grass; the panel discussion “Female Trouble: Fearless Women Leading the Way in Horror, Fantasy, and Suspense,” with Meredith Alloway, Roxanne Benjamin, Emma Tammi, and Wexler; the American premiere of Peter Brunner’s To the Night, starring Caleb Landry Jones; Zack Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein’s Freaks, starring Emile Hirsch; and Chinese master Zhang Yimou’s Shadow, preceded by a talk with stuntwomen Kimmy Suzuki and Ai Ikeda. Oh, as part of the festival special focus “Satan Is Your Friend,” there’s also the world premiere of the restoration of Ray Laurent’s 1970 documentary, Satanis: The Devil’s Mass, which will do a lot more than just have you repeating, “What the f?!,” and New York Asian Film Festival cofounder Grady Hendrix will be on hand to present his latest book, We Sold Our Souls, with a talk and signing. Like we said, WTF?!

BABYLON

Brinsley Forde stars as the conflicted Blue in Franco Rosso’s incendiary Babylon

BABYLON (Franco Rosso, 1980)
Expands Friday, March 15
www.kinolorber.com

One of the best, and most important, British films of the last forty years took the long route to reach America, but it’s finally here, and it’s a knockout. In 1973-74, Franco Rosso and Martin Stellman wrote Babylon, a somewhat semiautobiographical story of prejudice and bigotry set around Jamaican sound system culture during the Thatcher era in South London. The BBC rejected it, and after several production companies passed on it as well, it was finally picked up by Mamoun Hassan of the National Film Finance Corporation. The movie was shot in six weeks on location in Deptford and Brixton and received an X rating, despite having limited violence and no sex. It screened at Cannes but was turned down by the New York Film Festival, which considered the subject matter too controversial. The film was restored in 2008, but an old print was shown at BAM in 2012, the only time the film was officially shown in the United States. That is, until now; the scorching tale at last got its American theatrical release March 8 at BAM and has now opened as well at IFC Center, Kew Gardens Cinemas, Nitehawk, and the Magic Johnson Harlem 9. Babylon is a don’t-miss work that is still frighteningly relevant today, even though it was ripped from the headlines of the 1970s.

The Ital Lion crew prepares for a toasting battle in Babylon

Brinsley Forde, a former child actor and founding member and original guitarist for the British reggae group Aswad, stars as Blue, a toaster — a Jamaican dancehall deejay who chants over riddims — whose crew, Ital Lion, is preparing for a bit-time competition against their archrival, Jah Shaka (the real-life legend who plays himself). Blue is a mechanic but would rather spend his time toasting, smoking spliffs, and goofing around with his buddies, including Beefy (Trevor Lair), Dreadhead (Archie Pool), Scientist (Brian Bovell), Errol (David N. Haynes), Lover (Victor Romero Evans), and Ronnie (Karl Howman), the only white man in the group. When a racist Caucasian family living above their hangout starts threatening them, some of the Ital Lion crew want to fight back, but Blue tries to prevent any violence. However, following a harrowing night when he’s chased through the dark streets by white men in a car, Blue packs his bags and reconsiders his future.

Babylon is a blistering film, spectacularly photographed by Chris Menges, who would go on to win Oscars for his cinematography on The Killing Fields and The Mission, and expertly edited by Thomas Schwalm, bringing the rhythm of the crew to the fore. In his first feature film, Rosso, a documentarian who spent his career making works about the underrepresented, captures the energy and the rage, the spirit and the fear experienced by Blue (superbly played by Forde, who was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2015) and his friends as they try to survive amid ever-more-threatening xenophobic danger that is almost begging for revolution and rebellion. It echoes what is happening around the world now, particularly the treatment of refugees and immigrants (legal and illegal) and calls to build a wall to keep out “the other.” Perhaps not surprisingly, cowriter-director Rosso (The Mangrove Nine, Lucha Libre) was the son of an Italian immigrant, cowriter Stellman (Quadrophenia, Defence of the Realm) is the son of a Viennese Jewish immigrant, producer Gavrik Losey (Magical Mystery Tour, Agatha) is the son of blacklisted American director Joseph Losey, and NFCC managing director Hassan is the son of a Saudi immigrant. And of course, the music is simply phenomenal, from Dennis Bovell’s pulsating soundtrack to songs by Aswad, Yabby You, Cassandra, Johnny Clarke, I-Roy, and Michael Prophet. In this intensely realistic and deeply involving masterpiece, Rastaman (Cosmo Laidlaw) identifies Africa, Jamaica, and England as the “Babylonian triangle of captivity,” but forty years later it continues to spread far and wide, ensnaring more and more in its hateful reach.

3 FACES

Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi plays himself in gorgeously photographed and beautifully paced 3 Faces

3 FACES (SE ROKH) (Jafar Panahi, 2018)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, March 8
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

One of the most brilliant and revered storytellers in the world, Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi proves his genius yet again with his latest cinematic masterpiece, the tenderhearted yet subtly fierce road movie 3 Faces. The film, which made its US premiere this past fall at the New York Film Festival, won the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes, and screened in January as part of IFC’s inaugural Iranian Film Festival New York, is now back at IFC for a theatrical run beginning March 8. As with some of Panahi’s earlier works, 3 Faces walks the fine line between fiction and nonfiction while defending the art of filmmaking. Popular Iranian movie and television star Behnaz Jafari, playing herself, has received a video in which a teenage girl named Marziyeh (Marziyeh Rezaei), frustrated that her family will not let her study acting at the conservatory where she’s been accepted, commits suicide onscreen, disappointed that her many texts and phone calls to her hero, Jafari, went unanswered. Deeply upset by the video — which was inspired by a real event — Jafari, who claims to have received no such messages, enlists her friend and colleague, writer-director Panahi, also playing himself, to head into the treacherous mountains to try to find out more about Marziyeh and her friend Maedeh (Maedeh Erteghaei). They learn the girls are from a small village in the Turkish-speaking Azeri region in northwest Iran, and as they make their way through narrow, dangerous mountain roads, they encounter tiny, close-knit communities that still embrace old traditions and rituals and are not exactly looking to help them find out the truth.

Iranian star Behnaz Jafari plays herself as she tries to solve a mystery in Jafar Panahi’s 3 Faces

Panahi (Offside, The Circle) — who is banned from writing and directing films in his native Iran, is not allowed to give interviews, and cannot leave the country — spends much of the time in his car, which not only works as a plot device but also was considered necessary in order for him to hide from local authorities who might turn him in to the government. He and Jafari stop in three villages, the birthplaces of his mother, father, and grandparents, for further safety. The title refers to three generations of women in Iranian cinema: Marziyeh, the young, aspiring artist; Jafari, the current star (coincidentally, when she goes to a café, the men inside are watching an episode from her television series); and Shahrzad, aka Kobra Saeedi, a late 1960s, early 1970s film icon who has essentially vanished from public view following the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79, banned from acting in Iran. (Although Shahrzad does not appear as herself in the film, she does read her poetry in voiceover.) 3 Faces is gorgeously photographed by Amin Jafari and beautifully edited by Mastaneh Mohajer, composed of many long takes with few cuts and little camera movement; early on there is a spectacular eleven-minute scene in which an emotionally tortured Jafari listens to Panahi next to her on the phone, gets out of the car, and walks around it, the camera glued to her the whole time in a riveting tour-de-force performance.

Behnaz Jafari and Jafar Panahi encounter culture clashes and more in unique and unusual road movie

3 Faces is Panahi’s fourth film since he was arrested and convicted in 2010 for “colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic”; the other works are This Is Not a Film, Closed Curtain, and Taxi Tehran, all of which Panahi starred in and all of which take place primarily inside either a home or a vehicle. 3 Faces is the first one in which he spends at least some time outside, where it is more risky for him; in fact, whenever he leaves the car in 3 Faces, it is evident how tentative he is, especially when confronted by an angry man. The film also has a clear feminist bent, not only centering on the three generations of women, but also demonstrating the outdated notions of male dominance, as depicted by a stud bull with “golden balls” and one villager’s belief in the mystical power of circumcised foreskin and how he relates it to former macho star Behrouz Vossoughi, who appeared with Shahrzad in the 1973 film The Hateful Wolf and is still active today, living in California. Panahi, of course, will not be present for the opening at IFC, as his road has been blocked, leaving him a perilous path that he must navigate with great care.