Date: Monday 3rd October 2022
HIT THE ROAD
(Panah Panahi – Iranian 2022)
Place: Connaught Studio
Time: 8.15pm
Free for members
Non-members: £7.50/Students £6.50
Membership is £35 per year for 10 screening
WFC are super excited to be back from our summer break with a screening of a terrific Iranian film Hit the Road. It comes from 38-year-old film-maker Panah Panahi, son of the Iranian director and pro-democracy activist Jafar Panahi.
Winner of the 2021 London Film Festival’s best film prize Hit the Road is a tender and unexpectedly funny story about a family’s road trip through the twisting desert highways and misty green valleys of northwestern Iran. Over the course of the trip, the family of four – two middle-aged parents and their sons, one a taciturn adult, the other an ebullient six-year old – bond over memories of the past, grapple with fears of the unknown, and fuss over their sick dog and even manage a sing-along. Unspoken tensions arise and the film builds emotional momentum as it slowly reveals the furtive purpose for their journey. It is an odyssey that confounds any preconceptions about Iranian cinema being austere and testing. The result is a humanist drama that offers an authentic, raw, and deeply sincere observation of an Iranian family preparing to part with one of their own. And although it emerges from – and is ultimately about – harsh social realities it is non the less a thrillingly joyous and playful work.
Małgorzata Szumowska, the LFF’s competition president said why it won “At all times in cinema history, but perhaps during a pandemic especially, we are looking for ways to connect to life. Our choice is for a film that made us laugh and cry and feel alive.”
‘an irrepressible defiance and comic energy bubbles under every scene.’ Peter Bradshaw – The Guardian *****
Watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJgDRMdlMYI
