“Lunch Meal” by Majid Majidi, Iran's Entry for the 2028 Oscars

Safir Arjan's assessment suggests that Majid Majidi's new film will be introduced as Iran's entry in the International Feature Film category of the 2028 Oscars, marking his seventh attempt at winning an Academy Award.

According to the cultural reporter of Ambassador Arjan, Majid Majidi after six years with the movie "Ghazai Nimroz | Midday Meal", a film about poverty, hunger and moral collapse in conditions of deprivation, has returned to the Busan festival; A film that was screened in the main competitive section of the 60th Busan International Film Festival in South Korea, and this screening became an opportunity for Majid Majidi to point out the American crime in attacking Iran and the massacre of children, especially the Minab incident, and present his new work to the oppressed people of Iran. But what movie are we talking about?

A school that closes without food

The story takes place in the village of Gorankesh, in a dry and deprived area in the southeast of Iran. Dawood Solan, played by Mohammad Rahimi, is a contract teacher who works with a low salary and is only about three months away from the end of the academic year and official employment in the Ministry of Education. He has worked for years to get to this position and hopes that after he is employed he will be able to get a loan, buy a house and live a more stable life with his elderly mother.

The school where Solan teaches has 42 students. However, the presence of many children in class is not only dependent on education: the lunch distributed at school is for some of them the only meal of the day. Some children even take leftover food home to share with their families. The cost of this food program is provided by a charity that is not directly related to the Ministry of Education. With his death, his heirs refuse to continue the financial aid and the provision of food to the students stops. The consequence of this is quickly becoming apparent: children no longer have a reason to come to school, and if the trend continues, the school will be closed in about two weeks.

Solan is in a contradictory situation. On the one hand, it requires the continuation of school activities for official employment; On the other hand, he knows that he cannot keep his students in class without food. His career future is tied to the fate of the school, but the institution that should support education does not provide him with effective practical help. At first, Solan tries to pay for students' lunch from personal sources. He and his mother leave their rented house and go to school so that the rent can be eliminated, leaving more money for food.

However, these savings are not enough to keep the school afloat. The teacher is forced to find another way to make ends meet: he turns to smuggling and selling fuel at night and teaches at school during the day. Fuel smuggling is a common activity in this area and even some children are involved in it to help support their families. From the very beginning, the film places Solan's illegal activity in a social context where poverty and lack of economic opportunities have blurred the line between work and crime for many residents.

But "Lunch Promise" doesn't just portray fuel smuggling as a heroic act to save children. In its review, Variety emphasizes that the film's main conflict arises when Solan's decisions, despite their seemingly benevolent intent, have more complex moral implications. The first signs of this change are not so great. Solan hesitates to accept students who come to his class from other villages; Because each new student brings more food costs. Then, when his mother prepares food for the guests, he becomes angry with her; Because he is worried that this will reduce the portion of food for students.

In these moments, helping others is no longer a free and absolutely moral act. A teacher who sacrifices herself to keep the school afloat is gradually making tough, sometimes brutal, decisions about who deserves help and how limited resources should be divided. Over time, Solan's responsibilities go beyond providing food for students. With the closure of a school in another area, a group of children come to him to continue their education, and accepting them puts more financial pressure on him. At the same time, he also takes on the responsibility of taking care of a sick old man; An incident that reveals one of the most complicated aspects of a teacher's personality.

Variety points out an important point in Majidi's narration: "The film gradually makes Solan's motives more ambiguous and hides part of his deceitful behavior from the audience until the right moment. In this way, the issue is not only for whom the teacher prepares food and at what cost; Rather, the question is also raised whether his insistence on keeping the school open is solely due to responsibility, or is it also a part of preserving his own career? Solan needs a bank loan to buy a house, and official employment can pave the way to achieve this goal. Therefore, closing the school does not only mean that children are deprived of education; His own economic future is also at risk. The film does not draw a clear line between these two motives and allows benevolence and personal gain to be present in the character's behavior at the same time.

This conflict can be seen in Solan's dealings with the society around him. He argues that fuel smuggling on a limited scale is a minor crime compared to the profits made by the big business owners, and the motive and outcome of the act should be considered in judging it. But can the goal of saving the school justify any means? The film does not give a simple answer to this question. The law officer blames Solan for setting a bad example for his students. The representative of education is also suspicious of the method of financing school expenses; Even though his institution has practically left the teacher alone in this situation.

In one of the situations of the film, the person whom Solan turns to as a guarantee for the loan, announces in a bitter tone that the days of good work are over and from now on he will only work for himself. Such encounters paint a picture of a society where economic pressure and mistrust have marginalized shared responsibility. However, the film does not stop at condemning all the characters. The school inspector, whose presence is disturbing at first, finally sees Solan's efforts to support the children and decides to help him as much as he can. This moment, along with the indifference of the other entities, prevents the film's universe from being completely bleak and devoid of any possibility of empathy.

Reflecting a social crisis in the structure of the film

Visually, "Nimroz Food" relies on the dry geography of the southeastern region of Iran. Homan Bahmanesh, the director of photography and one of the writers of the script, has made the difficult conditions in which the characters live a part of the narrative by recording the harsh and waterless landscapes of the region.

Screen Daily points out the contrast between the opening shots of the dry and rough hills of Chabahar region and the images at the end of the film of a green garden and harvest. This image change reflects the transformation of men's lives that the story follows over several months; A change that, at the same time, keeps alive the central moral question of the film: can the end result justify the path taken to get there?

In this work, instead of advancing his social criticism through direct explanations and rhetorical dialogues, Majidi places it in the daily behaviors of the characters. Food preparation, distribution of limited resources, children's movement, and the teacher's conflicts with those around him, become the main components of the narrative.

Variety also emphasizes this realistic approach; A narrative in which benevolent intentions alone do not guarantee correct behavior. Mohammad Rahimi, in the role of Solan, gradually transforms from a well-behaved and caring teacher to a more tired, nervous and morally conflicted character. His performance is one of the strong points highlighted in this magazine's review.

Rahimi's acting is one of the main elements of the film, and as expected from Homan Bahmanesh, Bahmanesh's images give the narration a harsh and beautiful effect at the same time.

Up for his seventh appearance at the Oscars

Majid Majidi has returned to making feature films after six years with "Ghazai Nimroz". His last feature film, "The Sun", was made in 2020 and was presented at the Venice Film Festival. "Children of the Sky" produced in 1997 is still his best-known international work; The film that brought Iranian cinema an Oscar nomination in the non-English language category. In the new film, Majidi once again deals with underprivileged children and families, but this time the protagonist is not a child, but a teacher who is forced to make difficult decisions in a system of economic and administrative relations in order to maintain the possibility of education. The approach in this movie is bolder than the movie "The Sun".

Majidi's new film has again focused on the lives of people who are on the margins of economic and social relations. With the difference that his new film, unlike simpler narratives about sacrifice, does not absolve its hero of error and self-interest. In the world of Lunchtime, it's not just about children being hungry or a teacher being out of money; The issue is a situation in which the survival of a school depends on the personal decision of an individual who neither has sufficient resources nor receives effective support from the responsible institutions. In the end, Majidi leaves the judgment of Solan to the audience: should we blame him for his transgressions, praise him for the efforts he makes for children, or accept both aspects of his character at the same time?

According to Ambassador Arjan's assessment, after the films "Children of the Sky", "The Color of God", "Rain", "Song of the Sparrows", "Muhammad Rasoolullah", "Khorshid", now it is the turn of "Ghazai Nimroz" to participate in the Oscar category for the best international film, and Majid Majidi will probably be nominated for Iranian cinema at the 2028 Oscar Awards.