This film from British Iranian director Hassan Nazer was the British entry in the international feature section at this year’s Academy Awards; sadly it was not nominated. It is a likable, gentle comedy about two children in which an Oscar statuette plays a part: the ultimate MacGuffin, perhaps. It’s also a rather cinephile film which ponders the enormous prestige of Iranian cinema abroad.
The premise is that the great Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, having boycotted the 2017 Oscars in protest at Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim travel ban, cannot be there in person to pick up his Oscar for The Salesman. But the producer bringing it to Iran for him manages to lose it after a chaotic mishap involving a taxi (that key trope of contemporary Iranian cinema) and, once handed to the authorities, the Oscar is boxed up to be sent on to him via the mail. Then a local postman loses it and the gleaming, mysteriously exotic and heavy statuette is finally discovered on a dusty road by two little kids, Yahya (Parsa Maghami) and Leyla (Helia Mohammadkhani) who are profoundly, almost religiously awestruck by their secret find.
