One of the few Iranian New Wave films to be distributed in the U.S., Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cycle deals with pervasive corruption under the Shah’s regime. With its harsh, cynical depiction of life among the poverty-stricken, the film was banned for three years, yet met with widespread critical acclaim abroad. The story follows Ali, a young peasant who moves with his invalid father to Tehran. To pay for the ailing man’s hospital care, Ali sells his blood on the black market to middle men, who then sell the scarce resource to hospitals. Tired of being exploited, Ali joins the traffickers and rises in the ranks, becoming cold, corrupted, and eventually selling tainted blood back to the sick and destitute. —Facetsmovies.com
As an Iranian New Wave cinema icon, Mehrjui is regarded to be one of the intellectual directors of Iranian cinema. Dariush Mehrjui was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1939. As an adult, he moved to the United States and entered the University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA) Department of Cinema. He switched his major to philosophy and graduated from UCLA in 1964. Returning to Iran in 1965, he almost immediately embarked on a filmmaking career. He made his debut in 1966 with Diamond 33. His second featured film, Cow (1969), brought him national and international recognition. Cow, a compelling symbolic drama, is about a simple villager and his nearly mythical attachment to his cow. The story of the film was from renowned Iranian literary figure Gholamhossein Sa’edi. In 1971, the film was smuggled out of Iran and submitted to the Venice Film Festival, where, without programming or subtitles, it became the largest event of that year’s festival. The film was a turning… read more
