Cinema iFilm highlights ‘Captain Khorshid’

Cinema iFilm has highlighted ‘Captain Khorshid’ (1987) directed by Nasser Taqvaee.

The story of ‘Captain Khorshid’ takes place in a port town by the Persian Gulf. The captain is a one-armed middle aged loner who is faced with the danger of having his boat confiscated by the customs officials.

Thus, he decides to accept an offer to help a group of exiled criminals escape. But the trip takes an unexpected turn.

“Captain Khorshid is a sailor who earns a living transporting goods and passengers on his little boat. He lives in a village in the south of Iran where dangerous criminals are sent into exile because of its harsh living conditions. Having lost all his fortune, Khorshid is forced into transferring a group of criminals out of the country. The dangerous journey could cost the captain his life but he sees no choice but to accept the task,” a plot for the film reads.

The movie is a free adaptation of the American writer Ernest Hemingway’s 1937 novel ‘To Have and Have Not’; however, while the original story happens in Cuba, Taqvaee has localized the events, and thus the setting has been moved to the south of Iran, in a village on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

Considered one of the greatest Iranian movies by critics, the film won the Bronze Leopard for Taqvaee at the 48th Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland in 1988, and two awards for the best lead actor and supporting actor at the 5th Fajr Film Festival in Tehran.

The cast list of the film includes Daryoush Arjmand, Saeed Pour-Samimi, Ali Nasiriyan, Parvaneh Masoumi, Jafar Vali, and the late Fath-Ali Oveisi.

MG/MG