FILM REVIEW: THE IRAN JOB
Intimate, quiet, lyrical, and extremely powerful - the documentary The Iran Job is all of the above. Recently, this independently produced film portraying an American basketball player’s season with a club in Iran filled one of the theatres at the IFC Center for nearly three weeks, until Hurricane Sandy brought life in Lower Manhattan to a temporary halt. The great success among the public speaks for the documentary’s importance and validity and its brilliant, entertaining storytelling. Detailed and calm observations of human encounters, spontaneous moments that are allowed to breathe and unfold on screen, and an outwardly neutral yet sharp-eyed political perspective make this documentary debut an astounding one. Filmmaker Till Schauder produced the documentary together with his Iranian-American wife Sara Nodjoumi. He followed Kevin Sheppard, at the time a 29-year old basketball player from the US Virgin Islands, to the Iranian city of Shiraz, where Kevin was under