Release from Heaven, a beautiful Iranian animation movie is set to open animation day at Cannes Film Festival
If you love animation, especially fantasy related, it seems Iranian animation “Release from Heaven” is going to be just right for you. The intriguing project is directed by Ali Noori Oskouei, with a script by Majid Asoudegan, and mixes various techniques of animation in order to merge together imagination, storytelling and reality. And while its budget is estimated to be around 6,000,000 $, the result looks awesome.
The film’s plot takes place in a war-ravaged country, where Sareh, a school teacher takes upon herself to accompany two of her students on a quest to reunite them with their families. The independent movie is interesting because of its rather modest budget, but more importantly – because of the themes which it touches upon, such as war and its social and personal implications, and because of its female protagonist.
The Iranian film is set for screening on May 22 at 20:00, a day before the designated Animation Day at Cannes festival, which this year celebrates its 70th anniversary.
Synopsis
Sareh is a school teacher who writes comic strips. Due to a happening, she has to start a journey with two of her students to take them to their fathers. During the journey she tries to make them calm by telling them a part of the last story she has written. Regarding that the story is sort of related to her own past and nostalgia she herself gets submerged in it as well as the kids.
In the middle of their journey they discover a cave which has been in Sareh’s childhood imagination and she had described it in her story. However the discovery of this cave in real world makes her realize a truth about her childhood and makes her love the hero of her story.
She finds out that the man who is the hero of her story is not just an imaginary person but a real character who had made her childhood world beautiful with his kind behavior and nice stories.
Now she has just realized that her heaven like daily life is no longer attractive to her and she is determined to embrace the hardships and find her lost hero along with the search of her students’ fathers; unaware of the fact that she herself is becoming a hero for her students by her behavior and stories just like her own childhood hero with whom she had gone on a journey.
