Men at Work
In Farsi with English subtitles • In this delightful take on machismo and the male-female divide, four 50-something men in an SUV returning from a ski trip notice a huge, striking-looking stone standing on the side of the road. They pull over, and in a show of bravura rather than common sense they decide to push it over the dizzying mountain precipice whereon it rests. Their initial efforts to simply push it over fail. Then an older man with a donkey passes on foot. They try using his donkey to haul it over. When the old man protests that if the donkey succeeds, it will be pulled over the cliff, the men buy it from him. (Thankfully, the donkey can't budge it.) As the afternoon progresses, so does this absurdist comedy-meets-Sufi parable, as various methods, both likely and unlikely, are applied to the problem, with an obsessiveness both irrational and humorous. Man, it seems, must conquer nature. — Z. Elton
Director: Mani Haghighi
Producer: Mohammad Reza Takhtkeshian
Screenwriter: Mani Haghighi, Abbas Kiarostami
Cinematographer: Koohyar Kalari
Editor: Mestaneh Mohajer
Cast: Mahnaz Afshar, Ahmad Hamed, Mahmoud Kalari, Reza Kianian, Fatemah Motamed-Aria, Atila Pesiani, Omid Roohani
Print Source:
Film Movement
109 West 27th Street
Suite 9B
New York, NY, 10001
Tel: 212.941.7744 x212
