Thursday Movie Picks Meme: Middle Eastern Language Movies

So this week, the theme for Wanderer's Thursday Movie Picks Meme is Middle Eastern Language movies. Unfortunately, this is an area where I have zero experience. I haven't exactly seen that many Middle Eastern films and I don't have much to offer in this regard. However, I did take a class in which we spent a week on Post-Revolutionary Iranian Film, and there's been a couple of films referenced on other occasions. I probably won't have the most original or interesting list this week seeing as I'm just choosing from the few I actually know something about.

The Cow (1969)

Okay, so I only saw five minutes of this one, but it still counts. This was from a period of Iranian film that borrowed heavily from the conventions of Italian Neo-Realism in its reliance on documentary methods, use of non-actors, and an emphasis on everyday problems. In this case, the story is about a man's grief after his cow dies, and how he slowly loses himself when the villagers try to cover it up.

Close-Up (1990)

I wasn't a huge fan of this one, but it seems to be one of the most iconic as far as Middle Eastern films go. It's sort of a bizarre film that tries to blur the lines between drama and documentary regarding an incident in which a family was fooled by a man impersonating the director. The film combines documentary modes with re-enactments performed entirely by the actual people involved in the event (including the identity thief) in order to illustrate roughly what happened. Now I personally found it to be slow, not very clear, and boring, but a lot of people seem to like it and the director is supposed to be a big name.

Persepolis (2007)

Okay, I'm cheating slightly but I needed a third movie and this was the closest thing I could find to a film I'd actually watched. It is based on the actual experiences of an Iranian woman growing up in Iran during a very difficult period in its history so it still counts.