Edinburgh Film Festival: ‘Winners’

Edinburgh Filmhouse - 20/08/22

Now that Hollywood is mostly churning out remakes of old hits and endless franchise films like Bond and Batman, other countries have stepped into the breach. Poorer nations like Romania and Burkina Faso are producing strikingly original movies. Perhaps the most remarkable is Iran, where despite a repressive government, a string of top-class directors has been emerging (e.g. Kiorastami, Farhadi, Majudi). Hassan Nazer now joins their ranks with the auspiciously named ‘Winners’. 

It's a vivid energetic film about films. Somewhere in provincial Iran, an authentic Oscar statuette goes astray and lands up in the hands of a young village boy called Yahya who happens to be addicted to watching film classics from around the world. Yahya is especially keen to see ‘Cinema Paradiso’, which has of course a central character similarly addicted.  His supplier is a partner in a garbage recycling business; he has boxes full of movies on DVD which he lends to the boy. Sometimes Yahya is part of a disorderly rabble of youngsters who roam the village in scenes that recall ‘Los Olvidados’ and ‘Bicycle Thieves’. Often, his companion is a young girl, Leyla; in respect for her modesty he wraps the Oscar’s nether parts in a blue doll’s skirt. The authorities get wind of the statuette’s disappearance and Yahya takes evasive action, at one point even trying to throw the darned thing away. Attempts to sell it to the garbage business lead to the revelation that both the partners are former film stars who changed identity to escape the strain of fame. All leads to a happy ending, though not a Hollywood ending, it’s a lot more subtle and surprising than that. 

The village, its poverty and folklore, the surroundings in their dusty grandeur, buildings eroded by the wind, all are photographed in finely composed shots with hidden light, especially sunshine, profiling heads, vehicles, ancient ruins.  

In this movie, the interplay of fiction and reality has many levels. In the real world, the actors cast as the two garbage dealers, Reza Naji and Hossein Abedini, are well-known faces in Iranian cinema. Reza Naji himself won a Silver Bear Award at the Berlin Festival back in 2008 and the bear duly makes an appearance in ‘Winners’. The boy playing Yahya, with his dream of becoming a film actor, is played by newcomer Parsa Maghami, who has already garnered offers of other roles on the strength of this performance.  

It’s a feel-good film that embraces the stresses of poverty and loneliness. It’s an improbable story, a fairy tale, that includes a dose of harsh reality. It’s a bit of good fun and a serious contribution to world cinema. 

Cover photo: Alireza Farajpoor