Northern Irish filmmaker, writer, critic and traveller Mark Cousins has been coming to Karlovy Vary for several years now. This year he is presenting his new film essay about his hometown I Am Belfast and was approached by the festival to select a favourite movie to present as part of the new section Six Close Encounters.
He chose the Iranian film A Moment of Innocence, in which its director Mohsen Makhmalbaf deals with his own failure when, as a young activist, he stabbed a police officer. "It is one of the most provocative works I've ever seen on screen. And yet nobody knows it!" commented Cousins, who is fascinated with Iranian cinema in general.
He even once met Mohsen Makhmalbaf in person in Paris. He struck him as a rational person who was not floating in the clouds anywhere. "Iranian cinema also contains this seriousness. The West is fascinated with postmodernity, mixing everything together. Iranians do this as well, but their films always contain a factual basis, a depth, which seems to have been lost in Western works. They look for the magic of the everyday," adds Cousins.
You can find Zbyněk Vlasák's interview with Mark Cousins in Thursday's issue of the Festival Daily.
