The Paternal House

2012 | Rating To Be Announced | Iran | Kianoush Ayari | فارسی | 97 minutes

The consequences of a father and son’s violent act reverberate through three generations of their family.

Venice Film Festival: Venice Horizons Award: Best Film nominee!
From Cairo International Film Festival, Locarno International Film Festival, and 3x Fajr Film Festival award winning writer / director Kianoush Ayari!

Presented by Kaveh Shakouri and the Iranian Arts and Cultural Society of Ottawa

Tickets: General Admission $14, Seniors and Students $10

*This screening is a rental, normal Mayfair ticket prices do not apply

Beginning in 1929 and ending in the present day, Kianoush Ayyari’s powerful drama is about so-called honor killing, a taboo subject in modern Iran. The action, which is confined to the closed-off world of a family house and its grounds, with outside reality only impinging in the form of sounds and rumors, starts with a father murdering his daughter in an act of honor killing. With the complicity of his wife and son, he buries her corpse in the cellar. Family life continues, haunted by the shared knowledge of the murder across several generations. This conspiracy of silence and the film’s exploration of the nature of complicity make for a powerful commentary on life in Iran, but Ayyari constructs his fable in such a fashion that ultimately it transcends nationality, culture, and religion and comes to depict the structure and inner workings of totalitarianism itself.
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