The Traces of Light (Persian: رد پاي نور) is a 1996 Iranian drama film written and directed by Hossein Shahabi (Persian: حسین شهابی)
Social & External
The people behind it
Shahram Khazaei
Shahram
Rahim Fallah
Karim Nobakht
Reza novini
Reza Novini
Shahed Gorbani
Kimia Saboori
Mahin Bageri
Moscow, the 90s ... A city without a past and without a future. A city that doesn't forgive mistakes. Showing Moscow bohemia, the criminal business: nightlife, easy money, excitement and confusion form the surface of this life. The main characters of the film are businessman Mike and his friend and partner in smuggling Lev, a psychiatrist Mark and his school friend Irina who became the mistress of a nightclub, her two daughters - a crazy Olga working in the same club as a singer, and Masha - the “Moscow Princess” on the threshold of her thirtieth birthday. Love stories smoothly flow into a crime drama.
Forough is a middle aged woman whose husband has temporarily married with another woman. Even though that was kept secret from her, but his action is considered legal in Iran. Now the husband is in prison, due to not being able to pay second wife’s “Mehrieh” (the bride’s marriage portion).The second wife intends to receive her Mehrieh by asking the court’s permission to sell his house. Forough, the first wife, in order to not lose her home, intends to sell all she has to pay for her husband’s debt and release him from the jail.
For forty years, Esfandiar has been unconcernedly preparing corpses for the journey to their final resting place. One day, whilst preparing a burial service, he's taken ill. Might he too be mortal?
An experimental short film that evokes moments in the life of a man recreated through the magic of memory. Made from documents from various sources, this film is composed of several scenes: the stages of the day and of life between joy and carefree youth, the cruelty of the working world, the horror of war. The final result is put into perspective with the birth of a child, perpetuating the cycle of life.
Makhmalbaf puts an advertisement in the papers calling for an open casting for his next movie. However when hundreds of people show up, he decides to make a movie about the casting and the screen tests of the would-be actors.
An old villager deeply in love with his cow goes to the capital for a while. While he's there, the cow dies and now the villagers are afraid of his possible reaction to it when he returns.
After an Afghanistan-born woman who lives in Canada receives a letter from her suicidal sister, she takes a perilous journey through Afghanistan to try to find her.
A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task because he needs the money, but his new associate soon tries to talk him out of committing suicide.
Itinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Said falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes as his wife Halaleh, the clan's lone woman, a widow with a young son. Reeboir attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border; they're mules, always on the move. Said and Reeboir try to teach as their potential students keep walking. Danger is close; armed soldiers patrol the skies, the roads, and the border. Is there a role for a teacher? Is there hope?
An 8-year-old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.
A teenager decides to shut himself off from the world around him after receiving bad news.
Parvis, the son of exiled Iranians, copes with life in his small hometown by indulging himself with pop culture, Grindr dates, and raves. After being caught shoplifting, he is sentenced to community service at a refugee shelter where he meets siblings Banafshe and Amon, who have fled Iran. As a romantic attraction between Parvis and Amon grows, the fragile relationship between the three is put to a test.
A series of loosely related sequences representing a wandering train of thought.
Short experimental film in black & white. A young girl learns to appreciate her beauty through the help of a mysterious stranger... Will this be the key to her happiness?
A young toymaker tries to make sense of the impermanence of life that he has been forced to acknowledge through experiences of separation and death.
Esther, a film composer going through a dry spell, moves in with her boyfriend Michael only to find out that he still keeps his Ex-girlfriend's belongings in his closet. What follows is an emotional roller coaster of a film exploring the great lengths an artist chooses to go to for the sake of inspiration.
Jafar Panahi's short film, shot with one uninterrupted long take, about siblings trying to sell a carpet in need of money.
A railway crossing guard and his wife live in a routine of total isolation and uneventfulness.
A man and a woman relive moments of their lives transfigured on the landscape of a beach. Past, present and future merge in the cadence of the waters, which come and go revolving memories and old silences. So the characters go through a sort of trail of desire, leading the edge of the abyss of themselves, where all days born and die, the horizon of all passes, all eventides.
The lives of three strong-willed women and a young musician cross paths in Tehran’s schizophrenic society where sex, adultery, corruption, prostitution and drugs coexist with strict religious law. In this bustling modern metropolis, avoiding prohibition has become an everyday sport and breaking taboos can be a means of personal emancipation.
A married couple are faced with a difficult decision - to improve the life of their child by moving to another country or to stay in Iran and look after a deteriorating parent who has Alzheimer's disease.
As the Iranian revolution reaches a boiling point, a CIA 'exfiltration' specialist concocts a risky plan to free six Americans who have found shelter at the home of the Canadian ambassador.
A young Western woman is recruited by the Mossad to go undercover in Tehran where she becomes entangled in a complex triangle with her handler and her subject.
This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
Forced out of their apartment due to dangerous works on a neighboring building, Emad and Rana move into a new flat in the center of Tehran. An incident linked to the previous tenant will dramatically change the young couple’s life.
An American woman, trapped in Islamic Iran by her brutish husband, must find a way to escape with her daughter as well.
A young girl lives in the Outer Hebrides in a small village in the years just before WWI. Isolated and hard by the shore, her life takes a dramatic change when a terrible tragedy befalls her.
In 1979, amidst censorship and religious extremism, a revolutionary literature professor in Tehran gathers seven of her most dedicated female students to immerse themselves in banned literary classics.
In this adaptation of the critically acclaimed debut novel by Iranian American author Dalia Sofer, a secular Jewish family is caught up in the maelstrom of the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Rory is an ambitious entrepreneur who brings his American wife and kids to his native country, England, to explore new business opportunities. After abandoning the sanctuary of their safe American suburban surroundings, the family is plunged into the despair of an archaic '80s Britain and their unaffordable new life in an English manor house threatens to destroy the family.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.
After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.
Years after their teenage daughter’s death, Lois and Doug Riley, an upstanding Indiana couple, are frozen by estranging grief. Doug escapes to New Orleans on a business trip. Compelled by urgencies he doesn’t understand, he insinuates himself into the life of an underage hooker, becoming her platonic guardian.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
Iranian female judokas Leila and her coach Maryam, travel to the Judo World Championship, intent on bringing home Iran’s first gold medal. Midway through the Judo World Championships, they receive an ultimatum from the Islamic Republic ordering Leila to fake an injury and lose, or she will be branded a traitor of the state. With her own and her family’s freedom at stake, Leila is faced with an impossible choice: comply with the Iranian regime as her coach Maryam implores her to do, or fight on, for the gold.
Somaieh, the youngest daughter of an indigent family, is getting married and fear is overwhelming each and every member of the family regarding how to overcome their difficulties after she's gone.
Based on the true story of a black girl who was born to two white Afrikaner parents in South Africa during the apartheid era.
An Irish sports journalist becomes convinced that Lance Armstrong's performances during the Tour de France victories are fueled by banned substances. With this conviction, he starts hunting for evidence that will expose Armstrong.
Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.