World War III (BLU-RAY)

The official Iranian entry for Best International Feature Film at the 2023 Academy Awards, and the Winner of the Orizzonti Awards for Best Film and Actor at the Venice Film Festival 2022, director Houman Seyedi’s savage, mysterious thriller/drama WORLD WAR III is one of the darkest, most enigmatic portraits of class inequality, desperation and murder since Lee Chang-dong’s BURNING and Bong Joon-ho’s PARASITE. Mohsen Tanabandeh delivers an unforgettable performance as Shakib, an anonymous day laborer still grieving the deaths of his wife and son who’s given a job guarding the set of a film about the Holocaust. When the lead actor playing (yes) Hitler is struck ill, Shakib is enlisted to wear the costume and mustache – and for the first time in his life, he has a little money, respect and a place to sleep. Unexpectedly, his sex worker “girlfriend” Ladan (Mahsa Hejazi) shows up, threatening to upset his tenacious hold on prosperity. When Ladan suddenly disappears during filming, it sets off a violent chain of events. What starts out as a dark satire of the Iranian film industry quickly evolves into a near-Hitchcockian thriller of the underclass struggling violently to be heard, to be seen – with an apocalyptic ending that is truly something to behold.