Downpour

Director: Bahram Beyzaie

1972 / 129min / DCP

A schoolteacher newly arrived at a post in Tehran, Mr. Hekmati (Parviz Fannizadeh), vies for the affections of a young woman, Atefeh (Parveneh Massoumi), with her burly landlord, Rahim (Manuchehr Farid), who uses her indebtedness to him as a bargaining chip, in Beyzaie’s “wise and beautiful” [Martin Scorsese] feature, once almost successfully disappeared by Iranian censors, now restored from the lone existing copy, the filmmaker’s, by the World Cinema Project, with its stylistic invention and the monochrome luster of its photography intact. A milestone work in the history of Iranian cinema, made with impish humor and a boundless affection for the workaday people it depicts.

Distributor: Janus Films

Restored in 2011 by Cineteca di Bologna/L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Bahram Beyzaie. Restoration funded by Doha Film Institute.

Part of Fugitive Days