**Nafass**

The song of sparrows

Los Angeles Times Review:

"The Song of Sparrows" is a fitting name for the new film from Iranian writer-director Majid Majidi. Sparrows are, after all, the most ordinary of birds: small, brown, common. The overlooked and the ordinary is exactly the terrain Majidi loves to walk, and we see again in this film his deep affection for his country's common folk -- with their meager resources, menial jobs and yet surprisingly fulfilled lives.

That is not to say he is content to merely let the camera linger too long or too lovingly, though the cinematography by Tooraj Mansouri is beautiful, from sweeping rural vistas to the choking streets of Tehran and always the faces, etched with grime and life, eyes that pool with hurt, frustration, acceptance.

Majidi also enjoys toying with his characters, forever putting them in situations that send their internal moral compasses spinning, letting good and bad choices alike play out long enough for us to see the consequences. In his 1999 Oscar-nominated "Children of Heaven," when the girl whose one pair of shoes has been lost discovers that a schoolmate has somehow inherited them, she begins looking for ways to reclaim them. Yet after getting a glimpse of a life that seems more difficult than her own, she walks away.

In "The Song of Sparrows," which he co-wrote with Mehran Kashani, Majidi goes down that road again. Here we have Karim (Reza Naji), who works long days on an ostrich farm, caring for the birds and collecting the huge, delicate eggs. But things, which are never easy for this impoverished family man, are about to get more difficult.

An ostrich escapes, Karim gives chase, but the bird eludes him and he soon finds it has cost him his job. There are pressures building at home as well. Haniyeh (Shabnam Akhlaghi), his oldest daughter, is deaf, her hearing aid has broken and there is no money, especially now, to replace it; and he is at odds with his young son, Hussein (Hamed Aghazi), who with his friends has hatched a fanciful plan to raise fish in a nearby sludge pond, a venture he is sure will turn him into a millionaire.

But fortunes change in the most unexpected ways in Majidi's films, and on a trip into Tehran on his aging motorbike, Karim is mistaken for a taxi driver and a new career is born. Soon he is motoring businessmen around the city all day, leaving each night flush with more money than he ever imagined. He's also become a master scavenger, with a keen eye for how to use Tehran's castoffs to enrich the family's life. Soon TV antennas, window frames and more are strapped to the back of the motorbike and transported home.

The more Karim makes and the more his reclaimed junk pile grows, the more unsettled his life becomes. The contented and generous man who had nothing has become the discontented man, hoarding his scavenged treasures. Though there are many morals tucked inside "The Song of Sparrows," there is much humor too -- from the unexpected turns Karim's life takes to the search for the ostrich that got away.

This is the fourth collaboration for Naji and Majidi, and the actor and director feed off each other creatively, pushing the boundaries of the characters each time. The director is also particularly adept at eliciting wonderfully moving and funny performances out of children. That talent, which gave such life to "Children of Heaven," flows through "Sparrows" too, with Aghazi, as Karim's young son, delightfully defiant and unceasingly optimistic about his fish enterprise.

Watching his films as an American woman, though, I can't help but be struck by the stark cultural differences in the portrayal of family life, particularly the relationships between women and men. The characters Majidi draws of children and their fathers are rich: sometimes combative, always loving and textured. But the mothers never truly emerge from the background. They are efficient, hardworking, faithful, loved but lost to us as dimensional human beings with a range of emotions and stories of their own to tell.

In his 2001 film "Baran," we get a glimpse of the possibilities when it turns out that one of the co-workers fighting for work is a woman masquerading as a man -- the only way she would be considered for the job. But, even there, the moral dilemma to be faced and resolved remains the province of the men.


Variety Review

A Majidi Film production. (International sales: Majidi Film Production, Tehran.) Executive producer, Javad Norouzbeigi. Produced by Majid Majidi. Directed by Majid Majidi. Screenplay by Majidi, Mehran Kashani.

With: Reza Naji, Maryam Akbari, Kamran Dehghan, Hamed Aghzai, Shabnam Aklaghi, Neshat Nazari.
After a critical misfire with the moralistic melodrama “The Weeping Willow,” Iran’s only Oscar-nominated director, Majid Majidi (“Children of Heaven”), returns to dramatic territory he effectively mined in earlier works in “The Song of Sparrows.” Using amateur actors, this deeply humanistic story set among his society’s underprivileged explores how capitalism and technology corrupt man, making him lose spiritual purity and all-important connections to family, friends and nature. Beautifully crafted, often sentimental, sometimes humorous pic may feel dramatically thin to some, but should enjoy commercial success domestically and appeal to niche distribs in territories where helmer reps a known quantity.
Protag Karim (Reza Naji) enjoys his work as chief ostrich wrangler at a rural ranch west of Tehran. Naturalistically shot scenes of his charges -- inherently cinematic creatures -- moving through imposing open landscapes provide memorable contrast with ugly, crowded cityscapes later on.

Karim lives with wife Narges (Maryam Akbari), two daughters and a young son in a small village. Like their neighbors, they share when they have plenty and lend a helping hand where needed. When an ostrich escapes, Karim tries desperately to find it. Spectacular shots of him on a mountaintop, covered in an ostrich hide and manipulating a wooden bird’s head and neck in a kind of mating dance, are echoed at pic’s end with the real thing.

Fired from his job, Karim travels to the city in hopes of replacing his eldest daughter’s broken hearing aid. There, he’s mistaken for a motorcycle taxi driver and begins to transport businessmen (all shouting into cell phones) and consumer products through heavy traffic.

The passengers and places he encounters start to transform his generous, honest nature, much to his wife’s distress. After Karim suffers an accident that leaves him unable to work, his sense of faith and purpose is ultimately restored.

Rounding out Karim’s simple story and repping the innocence of childhood, a quixotic subplot -- in which local boys try to clear a sludge-filled water storage area to breed fish -- yields some strong visuals and too-obvious sentiment.

As usual with Majidi, lyrical lensing (here by Tooraj Mansoouri, who delivers some stunning aerial shots) and strong production design (from Asghar Nezhad-Imani) convey more character info than the dialogue does. Contributions from longtime editor Hassan Hassandoust and sound recordist Yadollah Najafi also underscore the turmoil of the modern world.

Grammy-nommed composer and musician Hossein Alizadeh, a master tar and setar player, provides the haunting score.


More than one option(Person) Asghar Nezhad Imani
(Person) Asghar Nezhad-Imani
Camera (color) Tooraj Mansoouri; editor, Hassan Hassandoost; music, Hossein Alizadeh; production and costume designer, Asghar Nezhad-Imani; sound designer, Mohammad Reza Delpak; sound recordist, Yadollah Najafi; special effects, Mohsen Rouzbehani. (Reviewed at Berlin Film Festival — competing), Running time: 96 MIN.

demirkol

Es-Selam
i want to this film but i don't find to turkey

n_h03

does anybody have the download link for this movie?
I couldn't find any

lletaif

Please, Guys!
I need see this film....
Not comming DVD to Iran????
Not link for download?
Thanks from Brazil