Majidi's "Lunch Dinner" Wins Best Film at Busan / Majid Majidi at Busan Festival: Iranian People Will Not Bow to Oppression

Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi, whose film Midday Meal was named best film at the Busan festival, criticized the US war against Iran and its consequences for ordinary people, saying he has decided to use his presence at the event to bring his country's voice to the world.

According to Ambassador Arjan Majidi, while receiving the award, he thanked his family and the filmmakers who participated in the making of this work with love and said: "The hero of our film is the audience; Because it is your presence that allows a film to become a living space. I make films full of love."

He also mentioned the death of his mother a few months before the start of the film, saying: "The hero of my film is my mother, because she is a hero in all of our lives." Majidi added that his mother has supported him throughout his life and believes that her energy and prayers have influenced his films and have been a great force for him.

The director then presented his award to the brave people of Iran and citizens who have stood against war and pressure. Referring to the economic sanctions and military attacks, he said that the people of Iran have endured all kinds of pressures in the past 48 years, but they have not given up.

Majidi also pointed to the attack on a school on the first day of the war and injured students, and said that more than five thousand people died in this war. He asked: "What crime has our nation committed?" Our nation just wanted to live independently; We are innocent."

At the end of his speech, he emphasized: "We will fight to the end to regain our independence" and ended his speech with the following sentence: "I wish to have a world without war.

The Hollywood Reporter echoed Majidi's words in a report he wrote this morning. Majidi said: "This trip was very difficult for me, because I felt very depressed and tired and I really didn't want to leave Iran under the conditions that the situation is still going on. But then I thought to myself that maybe I and my film could convey a small message from the people of my country to the people of other countries and other parts of the world. That's why I decided to come here."

This director refused to explain how he traveled from Tehran to South Korea. His visit comes as the US blockade of Iran's ports continues, which was resumed in July, and wide-ranging sanctions were imposed on Iran's aviation sector in September. However, after reaching Busan, Majidi openly criticized the civilian deaths and daily hardships caused by the US military campaign against his country.

He said: "During this war imposed by America, a large number of Iranian civilians have been injured and lost their lives. About 150,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, and 156 civilians, including 120 students, were killed after the US bombed an elementary school in Minab.

Majidi continued: "The people of the world are observers and understand the reality of what is right and what is wrong. I also want to say that the people of Iran will not bow down to this oppression. They are brave and noble people and they want to show that America should not dominate other nations."

A UN fact-finding panel stated in September that there are reasonable grounds to believe that US forces were responsible for the attack on the Minab school and that the attack was an example of a war crime. However, the State Department of the Donald Trump administration has denied the credibility of the report.

Majidi has dedicated a major part of his film career to telling the stories of children and families who live on the margins of society. He often uses non-professional actors to depict poverty, solidarity and human relationships.

The film "Children of the Sky" made by him in 1997 was the first Iranian film to be nominated for an Oscar in the best foreign language film category. The part that now holds the title of the best international film. "The Color of God" produced in 1999 and "Rain" produced in 2001 also received the main prize of the Montreal Film Festival. In 2020, the movie "The Sun" competed at the Venice Film Festival, and Ruhollah Zamani, the young actor of this movie, received the Marcello Mastroianni Award.

The story of a teacher who fights to save the school

Majidi's new film, "Ghazai Nimroz", tells the story of Dawood Solan, played by Mohammad Rahimi; A contract teacher in a school in the deprived village of Gorankesh, located in the remote and dry areas of Chabahar region in the southeast of Iran.

After years of effort and commitment to his students, Solan is on the verge of achieving a better and more stable life. He expects to be officially employed by the government at the end of the academic year; An event that allows him to finally get a loan and buy a suitable apartment. He wants to buy a house with a usable bathroom in a nearby residential complex for himself and his elderly mother; A house that has even chosen the desired unit in advance.

But like many who live on the extreme fringes of poverty, his hopes rest on a fragile mechanism. For many school students and children from the surrounding villages, the promise of free lunch is the most important motivation to attend the classroom. These meals and the leftovers that the children often take home to their hungry families are paid for not by the government, but by a wealthy philanthropist.

At the beginning of the film, this man dies and his heirs decide not to continue his charitable contributions. As a result, the distribution of food stops and children disappear from the classroom one by one. If the number of students drops, Solan may lose both his school and the official employment position he has spent years trying to achieve.

From here begins his breathtaking and improvised effort to keep the school open; An effort that is accompanied by moral contradictions at every stage and may end at any price.

Solan moves in with his mother at the school and decides to use their little savings to feed the children and prepare the meals himself. But with the closure of schools in neighboring villages, more hungry students come to his class. Should he feed them or kick them out of school to preserve the fragile conditions that can finally secure his own future?

To provide more money to buy food, he turns to fuel smuggling from the border; Illegal work, however, is one of the few ways to make a quick buck in the area. More severe difficulties and deeper contradictions continue to face him; To the extent that his desire to serve children gets mixed up with his will to save his own life and it becomes difficult to distinguish these two motivations from each other.

Majidi and Homan Bahmansh, the cinematographer of the film, have recorded a large part of the drama with smooth camera movements. The camera often places the main character against the harsh and strange landscape of the region; It is as if his completely human sufferings are seen from the eyes of an indifferent and slightly sad God. The film gradually acquires a mysterious allegorical mood about the meaning of existence.

The weathered rocks and geological formations of Chabahar region are often called the "Mars Mountains" of Iran. Majidi says the production's cinematography, which features numerous drone shots, was directly inspired by the area's natural landscape.

“When we went to the area to choose the filming location, I was surprised by its strange appearance,” he explained in Busan. I felt that the steadfastness and loneliness of this man will be much more apparent in the midst of this rich and unusual natural beauty.

He added: "So I decided to go up with a drone and look at the people who live in those high mountains; I wanted to discover them first from above."

Selection of actors from ordinary people

Majidi says that his unconventional way of choosing actors is probably more important than the filming location in the formation of his works. According to him, all the faces seen on the screen in "Lunch" belong to non-professional actors; Ordinary people who have been found by careful search in the streets and areas where the story takes place.

He explained: “I have a lot of respect for professional actors, but somehow I feel like they keep repeating themselves in different movies, and that's not my way. What I do is I look for a real person who is close to my desired personality. "Sometimes this search can take months, but when I find the right person, it's very easy to move on."

The result of this method of casting is an impressive performance. Mohammad Rahimi, in the role of Solan, creates a cautious and introverted character whose sense of empathy, pride and growing fear are interwoven, without his motives being fully revealed.

In front of him, his mother, who is played by Khairy Zachary, another new actor of the film, with unparalleled grace and dignity, becomes the moral and emotional center of the work. This woman's immediate readiness to feed others is in painful contrast with her son's more and more desperate calculations; Calculations about who they can help, who they should leave out and whether it is possible to resort to any means to achieve a desired goal or not.

A film that has found a new link with war

Majidi says that the idea of making "Ghazai Nimroz" was formed long before the start of the American-Israeli war against Iran in February, but he believes that with the escalation of conflicts and the increase in life difficulties for the most vulnerable sections of Iranian society, the relevance and impact of the film has also increased.

"The problem I'm portraying in a school, children who don't even have access to food, is directly related to the international sanctions that Iran has faced for 48 years," he said. Now there is a blockade and we cannot even import medicine into the country; As a result, many sick children suffer. These measures affect the lives of ordinary Iranian people the most; People who just want to live in peace."

"Great powers like to talk about human rights, but are they now concerned about people who are suffering for no reason?" he added.