Author: Deborah Young

The Night Guardian

 For the fourth time, award-winning director Reza Mirkarimi is repping Iran at the Oscars with ‘The Night Guardian’, handling a predictably downbeat social drama set amid Iran’s swelling underclass with a delicate, sensitive touch, illuminated by young actor Touraj Alvand.

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Toll

Lively characters get involved in a farcical church course designed to rewire gays in the otherwise staid ‘Toll’ (‘Pedagio’), a story about coping with poverty and ignorance in remote Brazil.

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Red Island

In equal parts fiercely amusing and roundly desolating, Robin Campillo’s ‘Red Island’, an offbeat look at the end of French colonialism in Madagascar, is a crowd-pleaser in San Sebastian’s Official Selection.

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