Golden Globe awards that were presented on Sunday January 5, 2020 once again with its nominations and awards proved that cinema at least in Hollywood has fallen. Here the focus as examples will be on the major nominees and awards such as the best picture, direction, and best performances in both categories of drama & comedy/musical feature films.

“1917” by Sam Mendes that at first at lease by the title, one might think being about the most important event of that year, the Russian revolution, it is the story of an event during the first world war. But unlike the classic and masterpiece “All quiet in the western front” of 1930 by Lewis Milestone, that depicts the evil dark side of the war with its futility and millions innocent lives’ casualties, “1917” of Sam Mendes that took the best picture and direction awards, is about a rescue event on the British front to save 1600 English soldiers. Lewis Milestone, a frontier to start the first anti-war film of Hollywood to be followed by many other great anti-war films in later years needs to be a ring in the conscience of the present Hollywood filmmakers to continue on such legacy path instead of making pro-war and adventure war films.

In fact the best film of the last year happened to be a foreign film from South Korea by Bong Joon-ho that was nominated for the best direction and best foreign film and took the latter award. With no nomination for the best picture of the year, the film as his director mentioned while receiving the best foreign film award that the world needs watching more foreign films and tolerate the subtitles. The winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival with an unanimous vote, the film is on numerous top 10 film lists of the year. With its 6 nominations for the upcoming Academy Awards including the best picture, direction, original screenplay and the best foreign film, Hollywood needs to wake up and realize better films that are made outside their expensive studios with multi-million dollars budget.

While Martin Scorsese still stuck in his path of gangster films making with his last one with “The Irishman”, and Quentin Tarantino absorbed by the title of “Once upon a time” from the master Sergio Leone, makes a mockery of such a story in Hollywood, if it reminds the film scholars a minute about two Sergio’s great masterpieces. In fact Jojo Rabbit by the New Zealand actor and director Taika Waititi was the second best film of the year, followed by Joker of Todd Phillips, and Rocketman of Dexter Fletcher. The other nominated film for the best picture awards, Marriage Story is another lame film about separation like the Iranian “A Separation” that surprisingly astonished Hollywood 8 years ago just for the sake of publicity. “The Two Popes” that was also nominated for the best picture is another critical Vatican film over their pedophilic priests, another publicity films that Hollywood loves.

On the performances, the humanitarian Joaquin Phoenix deservedly, after years of great performances and nominations finally won his second best acting award after his first one for “Walk the line”. But the surprise was the best female performance award that was presented to Renee Zellweger for playing Judy Garland, with no looking or performance alike to the classic protagonist, Golden Globe had forgotten the great performance of Marion Cotillard in “La Vie en Rose” depicting Edith Piaf. Another surprise was the best performance award in a musical/comedy to Awkwafina for the boring film “The Farewell”, while Golden Globe missing the better performance of Charlize Theron in Bombshell. Eddie Murphy performs well with his surprising comeback in “Dolemite is my name”, so does Taron Egerton in “Rocketman” who wins the best actor performance in a musical or comedy.

With no great films coming out of Hollywood in 2019, the upcoming Academy Award once again at least could recognize a better film than their owns if “Parasite” will be awarded for the best picture, direction, original screenplay, and the best foreign film. The only other deserving award suggested by this website would be for Joaquin Phoenix in Joker.

Introduction:

The second documentary on this list of the greatest films of all time is the depiction of the story of the largest demonstration in human’s history in one day on February 15, 2003 across the globe against the American invasion of Iraq. The film rightly opens with the last lines of the poem of “Masque of Anarchy” by the British poet, “Percy Bysshe Shelley” written on the “Peterloo Massacre” in Manchester England in 1819, when 60,000 to 80,000 peaceful demonstrators demanding the reform of parliament were massacred by the British cavalry.

“…Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few”       Masque of Anarchy/ Percy Bysshe Shelley

The film opens first on the protest demonstration in London, England where over one million English people demanded the abortion of the plan invading Iraq and asked for peace. Then the films before showing the film’s credit, browses briefly across the globe and shows a few other similar demonstrations. Afterwards the September 11 of 2001 and the attack on the New York City’s twin towers that prompted George W. Bush to announce the war against Iraq is briefly shown. Then a pro-peace group all around the world organize a “Stop the War Coalition” that leads to the February 15, 2003 demonstration. There are interviews with prominent figures such as Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff of US secretary of State, Colin Powell who confess that Bush administration lied to the American people and the world to connect the 9/11 event to Iraq and they faked finding the evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq.

The film also discloses the British Government fake report that backed up Bush administration in confirming the existence of WMD in Iraq that was presented to the parliament by the prime minister, Tony Blair. Tim Goodrich, a US Air Force pilot, participating in the air strike confesses that he soon discovered that he and his fellow pilots are dispatched to a unjust war to kill innocent civilians. He continues his own personal observation of the war plot that while Bush was lying that still they expect a peace solution, US and British forces had already been mobilized and ready for their invasion.

Throughout the film we see some of the 789 cities in 72 countries across the globe’s demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq. We witness huge seas of people of all ages from children, men and women all across Europe, including over half a million in numerous cities in France, over 300 German towns including over 300,000 in Berlin, 100,000 in Dublin, over 650,000 in Rome, 55 cities in Spain, the largest in Barcelona and Madrid with over 1,500,000 and 660,000 people, over half a million in Valencia, 250,000 in Sevile, over 70 cities in Canada despite the temperature below -30 C, Over 100,000 in New York City including the 9/11 families and war veterans, over 200,000 in San Francisco, over 200,000 in Syria, over 200,000 in Sydney and over 200,000 in Melbourne and other Australian cities, and over 800 cities around the world, even in Antarctica. The day after the global demonstrations, New York Times truly wrote that there are two superpowers on earth, the United States of America and the people’s power on the streets.

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The Greatest films of all time: 97.We Are Many (England) (2014)

Introduction:

The film is a heroic while beautiful documentary by Patricio Guzman who has been long popular around the world for his documentaries of Chilean struggles for freedom and democracy in 1970’s. His “Battle of Chile” made between 1975 to 1979 in three parts and his documentary “Salvador Allende” in 2004 from his election to the presidency until the coup by the dictator general Pinoche who put Chile into the darkness for decades, has already made Guzman a political spokesman of his country at least on the screen. “Nostalgia for the Light” is another heroic documentary exposing the mass crimes of Pinoche many years before through the search of the families of the victims who were murdered and buried in the Altacama Desert in Chile. This nostalgia happens and shown on the screen by Guzman elegantly under the enormous starry lights of the desert that is known globally and is used as the site for the observation and studies of universe by international astronomers with their huge observatory and telescope.

The parallel between the astronomers searching for the human’s origin and the women who still after decades have not stopped searching for the remains of their murdered beloveds, makes this documentary a masterpiece and a story needed to be told and depicted on the screen. Guzmán narrates the documentary himself that include interviews and commentary from the relatives of the victims, astronomers, archeologists and geologists. The vast Atacama Desert at a high altitude, red and dry like the surface of Mars is also a graveyard of abundant remnants of pre-historic beings like dinasaures, mollusks, and also Indian carvings, mummified remains six different cultures, and even meteorites. All these remote archeological remains are mixed with a near past remains of body parts and pieces of murdered victims of democracy fighters that found by the relatives such as a woman who finds her brother’s foot still in his shoes, a part of his forehead and skull.

A Brown spot of Shame on the face of Earth:

The film opens by showing an image of the Altacama Desert on earth from a space view, asserting it as a small brown patch or dirt spot on the human’s history. In this driest spot on earth, the astronomers from around the world have generated the biggest telescope and gathered to study the universe above and our origin. While the world scientists are in love with the Chilean’s sky to find the human’s origin, a woman who searches the desert for the remains of her murdered beloved, pleas that the telescope for a moment look deep into the earth below.  

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The Greatest films of all time: 96.Nostalgia for the Light (Chile/France/Germany/Spain) (2010)

Introduction:

On the verge of the fall of cinema as an art medium, “The White Meadows” written, produced and directed by Mohamad Rasoulof from Iran is like resuscitating a dead body and bring it all to life. This fictional surreal, existential and philosophical film poetically probes into the superstitious beliefs and rituals of ordinary people of a few villages on the skirt of a salt lake in Iran. This metaphoric critic of superstitions and religious rigidity still existing at the dawn of the new millennium costs Rasoulof and his editor, Jafar Panahi sentence to 6 years in prison by the Islamic government of Iran, a year after the release of the film. Although a year later in 2011 their appeal concluded in the release of Panahi, but Rasoulof’s sentence was reduced to one year in prison for propaganda against the Islamic regime.

This masterpiece elegantly uncovers bare to the bones the still existing superstitions and religious rigidity at the cost of lives in a remote region of Iran that is an example of many such regions in the world. A perfect look-alike mélange of surrealistic, existentialistic, and poetic works of the masters of cinema such as Bunuel, Bergman, Antonioni and Fellini, Rasoulof stands alone pure and original in a novel piece of cinematic art. With its superb story design, beautiful and poetic cinematography by Ebrahim Ghafori and matched music score by Mohammad Reza Darvishi, the film is what the true believers of cinema as an art medium had been waiting for in a long time.  

A Cinematic Rejuvenation:

The film opens in close up on an old man, Rahmat (Hassan Pourshirazi) cleaning a few small glass jars that we learn later to be used for collecting the tears of mourners. Rahmat after walking in a long white landscape of salt field (White Meadows) reaches to his boat docking by the salt lake and paddles for his destination to a village on the other side to collect the tears of the mourners of a recently deceased young woman. After hearing from the locals of the beauty, youth and premature death of the girl and collecting the tears of the mourners, the man loads the corpse on his boat and departs to the other side of the lake to bury her as that salt island has no cemetery.

Midway on the lake, the man opens the sheet over the corpse to confirm the beauty of the girl, but jumps in a shock to see a young alive boy, Nasim (Younes Ghazali) under the sheath. Upset of the trick, he throws the boy in the water but later rescues him as the boy could not swim. Nasim explains that he has replaced himself with the corpse of the girl to get out of the village in the search of his father who had left them years ago. Rahmat finally agrees to take the boy along only if he acts as a mute and deaf, so others not to discover his means. The two arrive to the other side of the lake where in the first scene a blind man picking up the dead bodies of many black birds that have died for drinking the salty water of the lake.

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The Greatest films of all time: 95.The White Meadows (Iran) (2009)

Introduction:

“The Reader” is Based on the German novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink, a lawyer, judge and an academic in addition to be a novelist, published in 1995. The film that was produced by Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack (who both died before the release of the film) was directed by Stephen Daldry, a playwright with many works in London and Broadway who turned to the feature filmmaking from 2000 with “Billy Elliot” then “The Hours” in 2002 before making “The Reader” in 2008 with the assistance of the screen writer, David Hare.

A Nation’s tale of Redemption:

The film opens in the present time of 1995 when Michael Berg (Ralph Fiennes), a German lawyer by looking through the window of his apartment seeing a rapid transit car that triggers a flashback in his mind riding a tram in Berlin as a teenager in 1958. The 15 year old Michael (David Cross) feels sick after getting off the tram to the point of vomiting by an apartment building. Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet), a 36 year old tram conductor returning home from work, passing by him and feeling empathic, taking him upstairs to her flat, cleans him and walk him to his home.

Michael develops fever and has to rest for a few day, but as soon as recovers, he returns to Hanna’s place to thank her with some flowers. While she is getting dressed for work, Michael sneaks up on her that provokes him sexually when his eyes fall on her naked legs putting on her stockings, but as a virgin young boy, he runs out in shame. From then on Hanna will become the subject of the young man’s obsessive attraction and keep following her at work on the tram and at her flat. In one of these visit at her apartment, she asks him to bring her some coals for her heater that makes him all blackened dirty. She will undress him and bathes him like a mother to her boy. This inflames the sexual temptation in both and leads to a long sexual relationship.

While the sexual acts fulfill Michael, Hanna demands more and asking him to read her from his books and novels that he studies in school, each time before sleeping together. Book after book is read and Hanna’s thirst for learning does not seem to end. After returning from a bicycle trip to the country side with Michael, Hanna learns that she has been promoted to a clerical job at the tram’s company that prompts her to vacate and leaves her flat without informing Michael or we as the viewers knowing the reason.

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The Greatest films of all time: 94.The Reader (Germany/USA) (2008)

Introduction:

Based on the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby (played by Mathiu Amalric), the editor of the French fashion magazine, Elle, who was paralyzed by a rare massive brain stem stroke, called “Locked-in Syndrome”, the film is a non-conventional biopic. The memoir itself published in 1997 received universal acclaim and in the first day of publication sold 25,000 copies and in a week 150,000 and soon became the number one best seller across Europe. Locked in his own body with a totally intact brain, still capable of thinking, imagining, loving, remembering and still communicating by the blink of eyes, both the memoir by Bauby himself and the film adaptation by Julian Schnable is a human heroism to record such an emotional subjective experience that otherwise could not have been appreciated.

A Locked-in Journey needed to be told:

Taking laborious hours of work between Bauby and a female transcriber, from the publishing company, building the words letter by letter with the blink of his left eye (as his right eye due to dryness had to be stitched) to write his emotions, memories and regrets of a successful and happy life is an extraordinary rarity. The writing of the book took on average about 2 minutes for each word, and about 200,000 blinks in 10 months of working 4 hours a day, but the man dies from pneumonia two days after the successful publication of his book on March 9, 1997. The depiction of such heroic memoir to pass on to the millions of viewers across the globe to appreciate the life that often is taken for granted is another heroism specially when done masterfully on film.

The most part of the film is shown through the eyes and mind of Bauby as if the camera has been placed in his eyes and brain. The film opens in a hospital at Breck-sur-Mer by the sea when Bauby wakes up three weeks after being in coma from his massive stroke. The surrounding is seen blurry from the patient’s view, but gradually clears up with a better vision. The nurses and the doctor are all excited that Bauby has finally come to life, but he is still totally paralyzed and mute, while can see, hear and think. Slowly Bauby realizes that he is trapped in his own physical body, a rare stroke of the brain stem that the doctors called it “Locked-in-syndrome”. We hear Bauby’s thinking and feelings loud, but no one in the hospital can hear him as he is aphasic and cannot speak.

Soon Bauby is helped by a beautiful speech therapist, Henriette (Anne Consigny) who when she comes in the first time with another beautiful physiotherapist, Bauby thinks he has died and is in heaven. Henriette gradually helps Bauby (she calls him Jean-Do as his friends used to call him) to identify the alphabetical letters by blinking eye to make out words for communication with the outside world. Henriette from the start takes an interest in her patient beyond her job and spends more time with Bauby, hoping his recovery and soon to speak. She even gets upset at him when he is hopeless about his progress. While a laborious process, Bauby accepts and cooperates with the therapy and blinking as the only way of reaching out to his surrounding and others, including Celine (Emmanuelle Seigner), his ex-common law and the mother of his three children who often comes visiting him.

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The Greatest films of all time: 93.The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (France)(2007)

Introduction:

A fairy tale like no others, rooted in the real time and through the eyes and mind of a young girl, Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) who seeks escape from the sad and torturous reality of her life to a fantasy world. The film opens with the scene of her in car travelling with her pregnant mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil) to the country to stay with the army captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez) of the fascist government of general Franco, the father of their expecting son after the Spanish civil war in 1944. Reading one of the many fairy tales books that she has brought along with her, we hear the fairy tale of the Princess Moanna, whose father is the king of underworld visits the human world, where the sunlight blinds her and wipes out her memory. She becomes mortal but her father believes that one day her spirit will return to the underworld, so he builds labyrinths with an entry portal around her world for her return.

A Fairy Tale for escape from the bitterness of Reality:

With the above fantasy fairy tales as a prompt, the car that Ofelia and her mother are inside followed by a couple of army cars as escorts, stops midway in a woods as her mother is sick with her pregnancy. Walking a few steps in the woods, Ofelia encounters a big flying insect whom she calls a fairy. The insect or the fairy follows her to the house of the captain when they arrive and even at night in her bedroom asking her to follow him. Arriving in a labyrinth, the fairy transforms to a minute half human figure or fauna, who takes her to a bigger faun, half human-half goat like. Ofelia is told by the faun that she is the Princess Maonna of immortal descent but needs to enter their world for a test to determine if she is still intact and her merit has not been corrupted by the earthy life.

Meanwhile the mean fascist captain Vida proves to be a monster who has probably murdered Ofelia’s father as a republic resistant fighter, as he kills with his bare hands an arrested young man for the possession of a rifle and hunting rabbit then shoots his father. Later entering the underground labyrinth, the brave Ofelia now believing to be a princess encounters a giant frog who after testing her bravery and not being frightened of him, vomits a golden key that Ofelia needs to open the portal entry to the underworld with. Meanwhile in the evening at the dinner table where captain has invited his accomplices, we witness a priest among the army officers supporting the Spanish fascist government.

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The Greatest films of all time: 92. Pan’s Labyrinth (Mexico/Spain) (2006)

Introduction:

The best of Leonardo DiCaprio ever, and the best of Martin Scorsese since Taxi Driver, “The Aviator” was like a jackpot winner for the duo, due to its subject story. Based on the life story of Howard Hughes, an American genius, adventurer and the creator of one of the earliest aviation epics on the screen, “Hell’s Angels”, The Aviator brings his memory back. A business giant, record-setting pilot, filmmaker, and philanthropist that founded a huge medical institute for research that as of 2007 was the fourth largest private such organization, Hughes was as vulnerable as any ordinary man. Suffering from a severe OCD that DiCaprio demonstrates it the best on the screen, the film like Hughes’ life in between all the adventures and actions, is humane and touching.

The Aviator: Legends suffer too:

The film opens with Hughes’ childhood when his young mother bathes and warns him about an incident of Cholera epidemic at the time and that he is not safe. Hence sowing the seed of obsession about germs for the rest of his life. Jumping from there to 1927 when the 22 years old Hughes struggles hard to make his own aviation epic film, showing the world his largest airport in the world. Filming his airplanes with his 24 cameras, he needs two more cameras that when asking some Hollywood producers faces their mocks and rejections. Realizing that the movements of the planes in his film are not depicted on the screen well, smart Hughes discovers that he needs clouds in the background to show the actions better. He employs the best meteorologist, professor Fitz (Ian Holm) from UCLA to find him clouds and pays him double of what university paid him.

Forced to close his aviation film project due to its highly cost and not getting anywhere, he does not quit and keeps pushing forward against his business consultant, Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) advice and finishes his “Hell’s Angles”. The film is received with a huge accolade in its preview opening in Hollywood against all the odds. A star-studded life filled with relationships with the great stars of the golden age of Hollywood, from Jane Harlow (Gwen Stefani) to Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), Hughes and the film is not only about his aviation adventure and filmmaking, but his sexual appetite and romances as well. One of the best example of American ambition, Hughes not only flew his airplanes and set records the first times, he took his lovers like Hepburn on a flight ride at night over Hollywood and LA and let her on the wheel.

A perfectionist in the design and build of his aircrafts, Hughes infuriates his engineers like Glenn “Odie” Odekirk (Matt Ross) when not fulfilling his expectations. Pushing himself and his planes to the limits, in one of his flight speed race test, he breaks the record of the fastest man on the planet in 1935, but at the end he crushes the plane into a farm field. Right after his record breaking air race, while Hepburn tends to his foot injury, Howard shows his other humane and fragile part when he reveals to her that at times he gets some ideas and sees things that are not real. His adventure takes another extreme by being the first man to fly around the globe in four days. One of the first signs of his OCD in the powder room of a reception is when he washes his hands with his personal bar of soap and refuses to hand the towel to a man on a walker who cannot reach it due to his obsession.

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The Greatest films of all time: 91.The Aviator (USA) (2004)

The film unconventional in many ways, opens with a future scene when the principal character, Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) holding a man by his tie off a high terrace on the verge of falling. With this introduction of the persona, next he is seen drunk in a waiting room beside a man and a young woman, asking the man if he flirted with his daughter. Then he goes to the corner of the waiting room to urinate but is stopped by two police officers. He keeps talking tipsy that today is his daughter’s fourth birthday and his name means “take things one day at the time”. Then he cries that why he cannot get through the day today. His hand is finally cuffed to the wall while sitting that calms him down a bit.

Finally a friend, No Joo-hwan (Ji Dae-han) releases him from the custody of the police. In the next scene Oh Dae-su is in a phone booth calling his daughter about her birthday and that he has a nice present for her. Then when Joo-hwan finishes talking to Oh Dae-su’s wife on the phone finds him missing. In the following scene after the title and credits of the film, we learn that Oh Dae-su has been kidnapped and placed in a cell. First only his face is shown out of a small opening on the bottom of the door of his cell, asking the reason of his captivity and how long he will be kept there as two months have already passed. In the next scene the place is shown to be a run down motel room.

From now on the film is a one man show and dialogue. He tells us that whenever a music is played there will be a sedative gas released in his room when people come in to clean the room, change his clothes and shave him. Through watching TV, that is his only company, entertainment, source of news and information of the outside world, a year later he finds out that his wife has been murdered with the suspicion of a personal motive reported by the police and him being the main suspect. Year after years is passed and Oh Dae-su, thinking hard of who could be his kidnapper(s) and makes a long list of those whom he might have offended. Through watching TV, he learns boxing and fighting and plans to take his revenge of those who kidnapped him. The major events of the outside world such as handing Hong Kong back to China, the inauguration of South Korean president and his visit of North Korea, the death of Princess Diana, the turn of the new millennium and the 9/11 fall of the New York City twin towers are all shown on TV through 15 years of his captivity. Finally after 15 long years, a young woman walks in his room, hypnotize him and telling him “imaging you open your eyes and you’ll be in field of green grass in the open air under the bright sun”.

In the next scene in a field of green grass, there is a suitcase that when opens up, Oh Dae-su gets out and sees himself in an exact place that the female hypnotist suggested. In a long shot the green grass field is revealed to be on the rooftop of a high building where weeds and grass have grown. After getting use to the eye-blinding bright sun after 15 years of living in a locked up room, he sees a young man with little dog on the roof top. He approaches the man, touches him to see if he is real, for not touching any live flesh all those years, but the man who has been apparently on the roof to jump and kill himself, is suddenly grabbed by his tie by Oh Dae-su when he tried to jump down. Then the two sit down and tell each other their own stories.

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The Greatest films of all time: 90.Oldboy (South Korea) (2003)

A tribute to the famous poem of the Spanish poet and freedom fighter in the Spain civic war, Federico Garcia Lorca, the film is the creation of Samira Makhmalbaf, the daughter of Mohsen Makhmalbaf at age 23. Acting in her father’s film, “The Cyclist” at age 7, she made her own first feature “The Apple” at age 17 that screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1998 and later in over 100 other film festivals and more than 30 countries across the globe. Her next feature “Blackboards” two years later in 2000 won the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival. While her father’s film “Kandahar” was the first major feature about Afghanistan at the time of ruling by Taliban, “At Five in the afternoon” of Samira brought the attention of the world to the still repressed condition in Afghanistan particularly of women.

The film opening on two young women carrying water from a well on a desert nearby of their village while in the background a female voice reading part of the Lorca’s poem of “five in the afternoon”. Covered in burqa, the girl “Noghreh” (Agheleh Rezaei) reaching her home, putting down the pales of water, picks up her book and gets on her father’s horse carriage to attend school. Reading her book loud that is Koran on the ride, they pass through Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, we witness the poor condition of the country even after the American invasion and the fall of Taliban. Reaching the school that is a religious one, Noghreh enters through the front, passes by all the female students covered with burqa unnoticed, exiting through the back door takes out a pair of dress shoes from her bag, puts it on and opens her burqa, so we see her face for the first time. Walking on the road with her uncovered face, an old passing man in surprise and disgust, turns away from her and asks the god forgiveness for her sin.

Then Noghreh walks in a regular school where all the girls’ faces like hers are uncovered, while all attend real education by a female teacher. Noghreh explains to the teacher that her father (Abdolgani Yousefzai) does not yet allow her to attend school. The teacher asks the girl students what career they would like to have in the future that many pick to be teachers, engineers and doctors, but when they are asked who would like to be the future president of the country, first nobody dares to say so, then Noghreh and a few others stand up for such career. Afterwards there is a heated discussion among the girls about the possibility and impossibility of a female president in Afghanistan. Majority of the students believe that a woman never could reach such post as their country is not even like Pakistan when Noghreh makes an example of Benazir Bhutto.

While the film like a documentary discusses the repressed condition in Afghanistan at the 21^st century through the dialogues, it is not shortcoming to show the same in beautiful imagery of not only the poverty and oppression in the country, but its striking beautiful landscape and its people in their amazing colorful clothings. After the school and going to collect water from the well again, Noghreh runs into a few trucks unloading a large group of refugees of Afghan women, children and old men who had to flee Pakistan from Taliban. She feels sympathetic and leads them to the ruins around her home to stay in. Hundreds of these refugees lay down around Noghreh’s house and when a family occupies half of the living room of her sister-in-law’s (Laylemo) (Marzieh Amiri) who struggles in survival with her little baby whom she has not enough breast milk to feed, she protests.

In another scene, Noghreh’s father who is traditional and religious like many others in Afghanistan, protests to another old man who listens to a radio music and calls it a sin, that the old man responds that he is alive for the music. Noghreh’s father who does not like her and his daughter-in-law (Laylemo) to live close to the strange refugees specially men leave the village with them at night. Staying overnight in the wreckage of an airplane close to the airport, Laylemo reveals to Noghreh that her baby may die as she has no milk, or food to feed her. At the same time like a curious journalist, Noghreh keeps asking the refugees who lived in Pakistan about Benazir Bhutto and how good a prime minister she was. Here she meets a young man (Razi Mohebi) who writes poetry and tries to avoid politics.     

The scene in the ruins of Darul Aman Palace in the vicinity of Kabul, where Noghreh and her father walk in for the search of water when they hear the sound of water dripping is strikingly a visual masterpiece. Her father while walking with his horse who’s also struggling with thirst and hunger in the ruins, apologizes to the animal for not being able to take care of him. Walking out of the palace, Noghreh runs into a white UN soldier from France. She introduces her then asks his name and who’s the president of his country. She is again after the inquiry of finding the qualities of the presidents in different countries with the hope to become the leader of her own one day. The French soldier recommends that she needs to promote herself by advertising that the young poet who has just joined their conversation, suggest her to need photos for her campaign.

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The Greatest films of all time: 89. At Five in the afternoon (2003) (Iran)