Thursday, October 23, 2008

Ein Augenblick Freiheit / For A Moment Freedom

I just got home from what might just turn out to be the best movie at this year's Viennale film-festival: Ein Augenblick Freiheit (For A Moment Freedom).

The movie, which had previously been praised at other film-festivals, tells three stories of people fleeing from Iran, hoping to get to Europe, but who all get stuck in Ankara. In a very touching (more than one person in the audience mentioned that the story went under their skin) yet at times also amusing manner the viewer gets an insight into the backgrounds, struggles, hopes and difficulties of the various characters.

To say that after watching Ein Augenblick Freiheit you know what people who flee their country are going through would be an overstatement. But I dare say it's as close as you'll ever get by watching a movie. In that context a comment by one of the lead actors struck me as memorable as he said that "this experience made me realize what my parents were going through when we fleed Iran in my childhood because obviously I was too young to understand it at the time".

Speaking of the actors, their performances were simply breathtaking, I can't describe it in any other way. Kudos also to the director Arash T. Riahi who obviously did an amazing job during the 7 years it took to make this movie. His previous work Exile Family Movie (which I had the pleasure of seeing during my internship in Washington, DC) is also an amazing film.

In the end I'd definitely recommend you to watch this movie, it's definitely one of the best ones I've seen this year. There's one more showing at the Viennale, on Tuesday, 28.10.2008 11 a.m. at Künstlerhaus Kino, and the general launch is set for January 09, 2009.

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