Iranian Auteur Majid Majidi Wins Top Prize at Busan Film Festival With ‘Midday Meal’

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Veteran Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi has won Best Film at the 31st Busan International Film Festival for “Midday Meal,” his simple, starkly powerful contemporary parable about a rural schoolteacher making difficult moral choices to ensure his students continue to receive a free lunch in the face of government cuts.

Majidi received the prize from this year’s Competition jury president, celebrated Chinese director Zhang Yimou, and proceeded to make an impassioned speech protesting the war in Iran — in particular decrying the Minab school attack in February this year, which saw 156 civilians (120 of them schoolchildren) killed by a U.S. military strike. “They will stand firm to the end and fight to get their independence back,” Majidi said, before concluding: “I wish for a future with no war.”

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With its humanist approach to social realism and its particular focus on child welfare, “Midday Meal” is of a piece with Majidi’s oeuvre, which includes such films as “The Color of Paradise” and the 2020 Venice competition entry “Sun Children”; he remains best known internationally for his 1998 film “Children of Heaven,” the first Iranian production ever to be nominated in the category today named Best International Feature. In an appreciative review of his latest, Variety critic Kambole Campbell wrote:”Majidi’s matter-of-fact style of shooting underlines the cold reality that [his protagonist] tries to navigate, and strips away any semblance of potential didacticism.”

“Midday Meal” could potentially return Majidi to Oscar contention: Under new Academy rules instated this year, the Busan win automatically qualifies the film for the Best International Feature Oscar, without any need for its home country to formally submit it for consideration. (Iran has already entered the lower-profile “Land of Angels” this year.) Busan is the sixth and final festival in the calendar to be granted this status; other films guaranteed eligibility by the new rule include festival prizewinners “Shame and Money” and “To Hold a Mountain” (both Sundance), “Yellow Letters” (Berlin), “Fjord” (Cannes), “Woman Unknown” (Cannes) and “Angh” (Toronto).

Other winners in Busan’s main competition — programmed entirely with films from Asian nations, most of them world premieres — include the Taiwanese family drama “To Be Ordinary,” which took Best Director for Lee Yun Chan, whose helming was commended in Variety’s review for its “handsome sobriety” and “delicate, empathetic touch.” It’s the first feature in over 15 years from Lee, who noted in her speech that she was wearing the same gown she wore when she premiered her 2005 debut “The Shoe Fairy” at Busan.

A Special Jury Prize went to Indonesian director Eddie Cahyono for his film “Ibuku,” about a working-class Indonesian widow struggling to stay afloat when her adult daughter lands in prison in Saudi Arabia, praised by Campbell as “most compelling when its spiritual qualities are felt rather than seen.”

The gender-neutral acting award was shared by two female performers: Japanese newcomer Kashun Himeno, whose performance as a lovestruck highschooler in the charmer “Satoko Always” was described by Variety critic James Marsh as “eye-catching [and] potentially star-making”; and Chinese star Zhou Xun as a single mother coping with her father’s death in director Gu You’s tearjerker “The First Taste of Loneliness.” Gu’s film, praised by Variety as “patient, restrained and gracefully observed,” additionally took the Artistic Contribution Award for sound designer Danfeng Li.

In the separately juried New Currents competition for first features, Indian filmmaker Shashank Walia for his film “Birds in the Dark,” about corruption and land disputes in rural Punjab; South Korean director Lim Ha-yeon’s “Beach Fictions,” a delightful, time-slipping romantic drama, received a special jury mention.

Zhang was joined on the formidable Competition jury by fellow Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan, as well as directors Kei Ishikawa and July Jung, actors Samal Yeslyamova and Choi Hee-seo, and producer Tran Thi Bich Ngoc, all of whom acted as presenters at the flashy outdoor closing ceremony at the ultra-modern Busan Film Center, with South Korean singer-actor Yim Si-wan (“Squid Game”) acting as master of ceremonies.

A surfeit of other prizes were handed out at yesterday’s Busan Vision Awards ceremony, where Mongolian-German production “Zogsool” took a quartet of prizes, while Spanish Oscar hopeful “La Bola Negra” added yet another festival audience award to its roster. More on those here.