There is a pleasing symmetry in the news that Winners, a sweet little meta-drama about a missing Oscar statuette, has now been submitted for Academy Awards consideration in the real world. The feature debut of British-Iranian writer-director Hassan Nazer, a former refugee long resident in Scotland, this love letter to cinema is a fully Scottish production but was filmed on location in Iran with entirely Farsi dialogue, hence its selection as the UK’s official contender in the Best International Film race. After winning the Audience Award at its festival premiere in Edinburgh, Winners is already a winner. Its gentle feelgood humour, charming young stars and cine-literate narrative should open doors internationally too.
Nazer makes no attempt to conceal his stylistic debt to classic Iranian cinema in Winners. Indeed, he opens with a fond dedication to Abbas Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi, Majid Majidi and Asghar Farhadi. The McGuffin that drives the plot is a shiny Oscar statuette, which has been sent to Iran to honour “our greatest artist,” an unnamed Farhadi-like director who was presumably prevented from attending the Academy Awards by a Trump-style travel ban. After being accidentally left in a Tehran taxi, the statue falls into the hands of a hapless postal worker, who secretly borrows it to show off to his home village, only to mislay it during a bumpy motorcycle ride.
The missing Oscar is then discovered by Yahya (Parsa Maghami), a nine-year-old Afghan boy obsessed with classic cinema, and his classmate Leyla (Malalai Zikria). This wide-eyed pair decide to keep the oddly shaped “doll” secret, wrapping it in a dress to preserve its modesty. After a local second-hand junk dealer dismisses the shiny bauble as worthless, the pair take it to a Fagin-like merchant who recruits village children to scour the local garbage dump for scrap metal. Only when the police become involved in the search for this strange novelty ornament does its wider cultural significance start to become clear. The fable-like plot ends with Yahya making a cinematic pilgrimage to Tehran while various secondary characters have their lives transformed by the fuss around this mysterious treasure.
The cinematic allusions in Winners run deeper than hat-tipping homages, becoming increasingly meta and self-referential as the story deepens. Alongside multiple references to Guiseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso (1998), recurring echoes of Jafar Panahi’s work also pepper the film, culminating in an audience-winking cameo by somebody who may even be the troubled director himself. This performance is credited to another actor but only glimpsed from behind, which raises the teasing prospect that this playful fakery may actually be a sly double bluff.
Meanwhile, two of Majid Majidi’s former leading men, Reza Naji and Hossein Abedini, play fictionalised versions of their real selves, disillusioned screen stars now living undercover to escape the pressures that came with fame and acclaim. The inspired notion of traumatised former celebrities entering a kind of showbusiness Witness Protection Scheme is a rich comic conceit which Nazer could have explored more.
Winners is a slight fairy tale driven by implausible plot twists, simplistic character traits and fairly inconsequential conflicts. But behind all this lightly post-modern levity is a wry commentary on the gulf between glitzy Hollywood prizes and the humble lives of devoted film fans, as well as the perception gap between media hype over glittering festival prizes and the off-screen struggles of film-makers like Panahi, whose career has been hobbled by arbitrary bans and Kafka-esque criminal charges. This cautiously political subtext may hamper the film’s chances of screening in Iran itself, though Nazer made it on location with official permission and delicate negotiation.
Mostly shot in winter sunshine in the dusty desert landscape around Garmsar, an hour southeast of Tehran, Winners has an appealingly spare beauty. Arash Seifi Jamadi’s lensing is low-key but graced with flashes of lyricism, notably some superb aerial shots and epic vistas of the railway lines that traverse this vast terrain. Nazer and his team also do excellent casting work, finding two child stars with natural charm and luminous screen presence. Maghami has already been offered more acting roles on the strength of this performance. It may be a long shot for Oscar glory, but if Winners wins, the meta-textual ripples across the art-house cinematic universe will be delicious to witness.
Director: Hassan Nazer
screenwriters: Hassan Nazer, Hamed Emami
Cast: Parsa Maghami, Malalai Zikria, Reza Naji, Hossein Abedini, Mahmoud Jafari, Leyla Mohammadkhani
Cinematography: Arash Seifi Jamadi
Editing: Hassan Nazer, Dave Arthur, Reza Jouze
Music: Mohsen Amini, Mohammad Saeed Shayan
Producers: Paul Welsh, Nadira Murray
Production companies: Sylph Productions (UK), World Film Productions (UK), Edge City Films (UK)
World sales: Other Angle Pictures
In Farsi
85 minutes
