Synopsis
Watch A Moment of Innocence (نون و گلدون, 1997) online on iFILM — Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Iranian tragicomedy. At seventeen, the filmmaker stabbed a policeman during a revolutionary rally and went to prison. Twenty years later, that same officer shows up at a casting call, hoping for a bit part.
So Makhmalbaf offers a strange bargain: each man will direct his own version of that afternoon. The aging cop coaches a young actor to play his younger self; the director does the same for the boy who once attacked him. Two memories of a single knife thrust start arguing on set, and a film about the past turns into an act of atonement. Iran, 78 minutes, hovering between documentary and staged reenactment.
It's a high point of the Iranian New Wave and of Makhmalbaf's own work — a study of how a camera can rewrite guilt. The closing image, a loaf of bread and a flowerpot held out instead of a weapon, has long been a textbook freeze-frame. Made for anyone drawn to the patient, humane cinema of Kiarostami and Panahi. Stream A Moment of Innocence (1997) online on iFILM.
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