Opponent
Iranian-born writer/director Milad Alami’s sophomore feature, Opponent, centres on Iman (Payman Maadi), an Iranian refugee who has arrived in Northern Sweden with his family and hopes to be granted asylum. As a former Olympic wrestler, it’s suggested that he competes for Sweden to support his asylum request. The decision not only brings him into conflict with his family, but creates internal and external conflicts.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Alami discussed cinema’s lack of an inner life, how he used the stories of immigrants to grow the story, and his desire to create an elusive protagonist.
Paul Risker: Do you consider storytellers to be naturally curious about human nature and what makes people tick?
Opponent
Milad Alami: Definitely! With filmmaking you have to be a sponge and the fun part is trying to understand those difficult things. I think it was [Andrei] Tarkovsky who said if you want to.
Iranian-born writer/director Milad Alami’s sophomore feature, Opponent, centres on Iman (Payman Maadi), an Iranian refugee who has arrived in Northern Sweden with his family and hopes to be granted asylum. As a former Olympic wrestler, it’s suggested that he competes for Sweden to support his asylum request. The decision not only brings him into conflict with his family, but creates internal and external conflicts.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Alami discussed cinema’s lack of an inner life, how he used the stories of immigrants to grow the story, and his desire to create an elusive protagonist.
Paul Risker: Do you consider storytellers to be naturally curious about human nature and what makes people tick?
Opponent
Milad Alami: Definitely! With filmmaking you have to be a sponge and the fun part is trying to understand those difficult things. I think it was [Andrei] Tarkovsky who said if you want to.
- 4/9/2024
- by Paul Risker
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
The Swedish Film Institute on Wednesday announced the nominations for the Guldbagge (Golden Bug) awards, Sweden’s top film prize, with politics taking center stage among the feature contenders.
Axel Petersén’s Shame on Dry Land, a neo-noir set in the world of online gamblers who fled Sweden for refuge in Malta, lead the pack with 9 Guldbagge nominations. But it was snubbed in the best film category. Per Fly’s cold war thriller Hammarskjöld, starring Mikael Persbrandt as the titular Swedish diplomat, and former Un Secretary-General, who died in a mysterious plane crash, received seven nominations, including best film, tying with Opponent, Milad Alami’s drama about a family who flee Iran for Northern Sweden.
Alongside Hammarskjöld and Opponent, best film nominees include Mika Gustafson’s social drama Paris Is Burning, the relationship drama 100 Seasons from director Giovanni Bucchieri, and The Gullspång Miracle, a documentary from director Maria Fredriksson about...
Axel Petersén’s Shame on Dry Land, a neo-noir set in the world of online gamblers who fled Sweden for refuge in Malta, lead the pack with 9 Guldbagge nominations. But it was snubbed in the best film category. Per Fly’s cold war thriller Hammarskjöld, starring Mikael Persbrandt as the titular Swedish diplomat, and former Un Secretary-General, who died in a mysterious plane crash, received seven nominations, including best film, tying with Opponent, Milad Alami’s drama about a family who flee Iran for Northern Sweden.
Alongside Hammarskjöld and Opponent, best film nominees include Mika Gustafson’s social drama Paris Is Burning, the relationship drama 100 Seasons from director Giovanni Bucchieri, and The Gullspång Miracle, a documentary from director Maria Fredriksson about...
- 12/13/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
- 9/22/2023
- by Screen staff
- ScreenDaily
Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
- 9/21/2023
- by Screen staff
- ScreenDaily
Screen is profiling every submission for best international feature at the 96th Academy Awards.
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
Entries for the 2024 Oscar for best international feature are underway, and Screen is profiling each one on this page.
The 96th Academy Awards is set to take place on March 10, 2024 at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
An international feature film is defined as a feature-length motion picture (over 40 minutes) produced outside the US with a predominantly (more than 50%) non-English dialogue track and can include animated and documentary features.
Submitted films must have been released theatrically in their respective countries between December 1, 2022, and October 31, 2023. The deadline...
- 9/21/2023
- by Screen staff
- ScreenDaily
‘Opponent’ debuted in Panorama at Berlinale.
MetFilm Distribution has acquired UK-Ireland rights to Milad Alami’s Opponent, which plays in the main Crystal Globe competition this week at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff).
The second feature from Iranian director Alami, Opponent follows a man who breaks a promise to his wife and joins a local wrestling club, after the family have fled Iran for northern Sweden.
The film debuted in Panorama at the 2023 Berlinale, going on to win a special jury prize in competition at Seattle International Film Festival in May.
A Separation star Payman Maadi plays the lead role,...
MetFilm Distribution has acquired UK-Ireland rights to Milad Alami’s Opponent, which plays in the main Crystal Globe competition this week at Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (Kviff).
The second feature from Iranian director Alami, Opponent follows a man who breaks a promise to his wife and joins a local wrestling club, after the family have fled Iran for northern Sweden.
The film debuted in Panorama at the 2023 Berlinale, going on to win a special jury prize in competition at Seattle International Film Festival in May.
A Separation star Payman Maadi plays the lead role,...
- 7/3/2023
- by Ben Dalton
- ScreenDaily
It’s striking how often the word “removal” comes up in various governments’ official policies regarding refugees and asylum seekers — a pointedly chosen term that conjures images of inanimate refuse or clutter awaiting collection, rather than human lives in desperate limbo. Fail to make your case to officials and you’ll be “removed,” a near-literally dehumanizing threat that hangs over Milad Alami’s tense, bristling social thriller “Opponent” like a pounding migraine. Following an Iranian wrestler and father whose urgent reasons for fleeing his homeland aren’t entirely what he claims them to be, this is a tightly wound affair that unravels an obscured past and an uncertain future neatly in tandem. Alami maintains suspense at both ends of his narrative without making a blank cypher of his protagonist, played with seething specificity by an electrifying Payman Maadi.
That galvanizing lead performance — by an actor who hasn’t attained quite...
That galvanizing lead performance — by an actor who hasn’t attained quite...
- 3/11/2023
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
Milad Alami’s Opponent begins with an Audre Lorde quote: “My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.” The Black lesbian poet wrote eloquently about the violence of silence, arguing that breaking through silence and speaking out is a radical act, as essential to self-knowledge as it is to communication. The protagonist of this tightly knotted drama — played in a knockout performance by Payman Maadi, churning with rage, desire and pained vulnerability — is imprisoned by his silence, literally wrestling with himself, to use the metaphor that gives the film its bristling vitality.
Maadi plays Iman, who fled Tehran with his family and is seeking asylum in the far north of Sweden. The reasons for that abrupt flight are revealed only later, but there are clues in a prologue that starts effectively with a blank screen and the sounds of body slams and grunts of wrestlers training hard in a gym.
Maadi plays Iman, who fled Tehran with his family and is seeking asylum in the far north of Sweden. The reasons for that abrupt flight are revealed only later, but there are clues in a prologue that starts effectively with a blank screen and the sounds of body slams and grunts of wrestlers training hard in a gym.
- 2/25/2023
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
While Sweden’s Ruben Östlund grabbed some Oscar nominations and took home Cannes’ Palmed’Or last year, two other Scandinavian filmmakers basked in the international spotlight following their Cannes competition premieres: Ali Abbasi with “Holy Spider” and Tarik Saleh with “Cairo Conspiracy” (previously titled “Boy From Heaven”).
Abbasi, an Iranian-born Danish helmer, and Saleh, a Swedish director whose father is Egyptian, are part of an exciting new generation of Nordic helmers who are shaking up traditional Scandinavian cinema.
These filmmakers are delivering singular and timely movies shot abroad or in different languages, weaving together genres and political elements.
“Holy Spider” was based on the true story of a family man who became a serial killer and murdered sex workers in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad, while “Cairo Conspiracy” is set against the backdrop of a ruthless struggle between Egypt’s religious and political elite.
Breaking away from the longentrenched trend of so-called Nordic Noir,...
Abbasi, an Iranian-born Danish helmer, and Saleh, a Swedish director whose father is Egyptian, are part of an exciting new generation of Nordic helmers who are shaking up traditional Scandinavian cinema.
These filmmakers are delivering singular and timely movies shot abroad or in different languages, weaving together genres and political elements.
“Holy Spider” was based on the true story of a family man who became a serial killer and murdered sex workers in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad, while “Cairo Conspiracy” is set against the backdrop of a ruthless struggle between Egypt’s religious and political elite.
Breaking away from the longentrenched trend of so-called Nordic Noir,...
- 2/19/2023
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Filmmakers Milad Alami, Kasper Barfoed and up-and-coming creatives Emma Sehested Høed and Jennifer Vedsted Christiansen are some of the Scandi talents plotting projects for the new Danish production banner Uma Film, formerly Good Company Films.
The Copenhagen-based shingle is run by three pedigreed female producers with a solid track record in Danish drama series and features. Stinna Lassen has produced for the Danish pubcaster Dr their biggest hit in the last six-to-seven years,“Carmen Curlers”, under the spotlight at this week’s Göteborg’s TV Drama Vision as contender for the Nordic Film & TV Fond Prize for best screenplay of a Nordic series. Her earlier productions take in Alami’s acclaimed feature debut “The Charmer” and series “When the Dust Settled.”
Lassen’s colleagues Claudia Saginario and Marie-Louise Gyldenkrone were respectively producer and line producer on another Dr’s smash local and international hit,“Cry Wolf.”
Uma Film’s fourth partner,...
The Copenhagen-based shingle is run by three pedigreed female producers with a solid track record in Danish drama series and features. Stinna Lassen has produced for the Danish pubcaster Dr their biggest hit in the last six-to-seven years,“Carmen Curlers”, under the spotlight at this week’s Göteborg’s TV Drama Vision as contender for the Nordic Film & TV Fond Prize for best screenplay of a Nordic series. Her earlier productions take in Alami’s acclaimed feature debut “The Charmer” and series “When the Dust Settled.”
Lassen’s colleagues Claudia Saginario and Marie-Louise Gyldenkrone were respectively producer and line producer on another Dr’s smash local and international hit,“Cry Wolf.”
Uma Film’s fourth partner,...
- 2/1/2023
- by Annika Pham
- Variety Film + TV
‘Love Island’ Heads To Israel
Israel has become the latest destination to embrace Love Island, with ITV Studios-backed Armoza Formats set to produce a local version for new Keshet streamer Free TV. Filming will take place in May for a summer air date, as Israel becomes the 26th territory to commission a version following the announcement of Malta and Albania last week. Avi Armoza’s ITV Studios-backed The Four creator Armoza Formats is producing the local version. The company, which was acquired by ITV Studios in 2019, pivoted earlier this year to become ITV Studios’ production arm in Israel and has already produced two local versions of Come Dine with Me for Kan 11 along with the likes of The 1 Club and The Chase. The show will air on Free TV, Keshet and Rge’s streamer that is set to launch early next year. “Since establishing Armoza Productions and producing hits...
Israel has become the latest destination to embrace Love Island, with ITV Studios-backed Armoza Formats set to produce a local version for new Keshet streamer Free TV. Filming will take place in May for a summer air date, as Israel becomes the 26th territory to commission a version following the announcement of Malta and Albania last week. Avi Armoza’s ITV Studios-backed The Four creator Armoza Formats is producing the local version. The company, which was acquired by ITV Studios in 2019, pivoted earlier this year to become ITV Studios’ production arm in Israel and has already produced two local versions of Come Dine with Me for Kan 11 along with the likes of The 1 Club and The Chase. The show will air on Free TV, Keshet and Rge’s streamer that is set to launch early next year. “Since establishing Armoza Productions and producing hits...
- 11/29/2022
- by Max Goldbart and Jesse Whittock
- Deadline Film + TV
Morocco has been attracting a rising number of high-profile foreign shoots since March 2022, lured by the country’s locations, skilled crews, competitive rates and its revamped cash rebate scheme, which has been hiked from 20 to 30 of eligible spend.
Of crucial importance the ceiling on the rebate available for each film has now been scrapped – offering a major boost to lengthy, large-scale productions.
Previously the maximum rebate per film was capped at 1.8 million. The total amount available per year for all projects is 10 million, granted on a first-come/first-served basis.
Other benefits available to foreign shoots include exemption from sales tax and zero fringe payments for crews.
To qualify for the rebate, productions must have a minimum Moroccan production spend of 1 million, an 18-day Moroccan shoot, at least a 25 local crew, and a local line producer.
Morocco’s previous 20 scheme was introduced in 2016 and fueled a progressive rise in foreign production visits,...
Of crucial importance the ceiling on the rebate available for each film has now been scrapped – offering a major boost to lengthy, large-scale productions.
Previously the maximum rebate per film was capped at 1.8 million. The total amount available per year for all projects is 10 million, granted on a first-come/first-served basis.
Other benefits available to foreign shoots include exemption from sales tax and zero fringe payments for crews.
To qualify for the rebate, productions must have a minimum Moroccan production spend of 1 million, an 18-day Moroccan shoot, at least a 25 local crew, and a local line producer.
Morocco’s previous 20 scheme was introduced in 2016 and fueled a progressive rise in foreign production visits,...
- 11/14/2022
- by Martin Dale
- Variety Film + TV
Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we’ll shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week we’re speaking to Moroccan multi-hypenate Khadija Alami. The producer and founder of Morocco’s Oasis Studios talks us through how she has facilitated more than 50 international productions to shoot in the territory as well as her ambitions to grow the region’s studio space and position the country as a top destination for international productions.
With the global production boom showing no signs of letting up, leading Moroccan producer Khadija Alami is driving the charge to encourage production houses to set up camp in her North African home country.
Alami, who was the first Moroccan woman to join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 2017, has been instrumental in fuelling local and international content in the country throughout the years.
With the global production boom showing no signs of letting up, leading Moroccan producer Khadija Alami is driving the charge to encourage production houses to set up camp in her North African home country.
Alami, who was the first Moroccan woman to join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 2017, has been instrumental in fuelling local and international content in the country throughout the years.
- 7/13/2022
- by Diana Lodderhose
- Deadline Film + TV
Exclusive: Liberian-Lebanese director Oualid Mouaness, whose debut feature 1982 premiered at the 2019 Toronto Film Festival where it won the Netpac Award, is set to write and direct a feature adaptation of Saphia Azzeddine’s novel Bilqiss for the Kennedy/Marshall Company and Khadija Alami’s K Films.
The project, which focuses on a rebellious Afghan woman who decides to take her life into her own hands in the land of jihad, marks the second feature film from prominent documentary and music video director Mouaness.
Bilqiss follows a young widow who is sentenced to death by stoning for calling the neighborhood faithful to prayer while the muezzin was asleep on the job. While on trial, she transforms the courtroom into a stage where she expresses her criticisms on her country’s fundamentalism and her own interpretations of the Quran. It’s a story of a strong woman who stands out from her...
The project, which focuses on a rebellious Afghan woman who decides to take her life into her own hands in the land of jihad, marks the second feature film from prominent documentary and music video director Mouaness.
Bilqiss follows a young widow who is sentenced to death by stoning for calling the neighborhood faithful to prayer while the muezzin was asleep on the job. While on trial, she transforms the courtroom into a stage where she expresses her criticisms on her country’s fundamentalism and her own interpretations of the Quran. It’s a story of a strong woman who stands out from her...
- 7/12/2022
- by Diana Lodderhose
- Deadline Film + TV
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