This twisted Iranian narrative follows a mysterious couple from Tehran as they distribute large bags of money in an impoverished mountain border town. Beginning as a black comedy, the film’s mood transforms as the games played by Kaveh (director Mani Haghighi) and Leyla (Taraneh Alidoosti) become increasingly perverse, as they find inventive ways of humiliating the recipients of the cash. The immorality of the central characters is at times sickening, and their chain of lies is often as puzzling to us as they are to the townsfolk depicted onscreen. What is the relationship between the pair and why are they giving away money to the needy? Modest Reception has no easy answers nor pat resolutions – instead Haghighi takes the viewer on an intriguing ride into the dark recesses of the human spirit.
You May Also Like
Acclaimed author and recluse Norma Boswell is reaching the end of her days. She has kept her terminal diagnosis secret from everyone around her, her housekeeper and gardener, as well as her estranged son, Justin. As her health continues to decline, her doctor insists it is time to bring in a live-in nurse at home. Stubbornly proud, Norma rejects every candidate for the job straight away. That is until she comes across Emma Keating, who refuses to take no for an answer and whole-heartedly agrees to keep Norma’s secret.
News producer, Tim O’Hara gets himself fired for unwillingly compromising his bosses’ daughter during a live transmission. A little later, he witnesses the crashing of a small Martian spacecraft, realizing his one-time chance of delivering a story that will rock the earth. Since Tim took the original but scaled-down spaceship with him, the Martian follows him to retrieve it.
The mysteriously familiar face of a deceased young woman shakes young surgeon Fabian out of his lethargy. On a whim, he leaves Berlin for Portugal, determined to win back his former girlfriend Doro, who works at an architectural company in Lisbon.
Troubled 17-year-old Sean Holloway falls in with a group of teenage outcasts called ‘The Misfits,’ whose charismatic leader, Ricky, takes him under his wing. But as Sean becomes more and more entangled in the gang’s anarchist ways, things begin to spiral out of control, and Sean realizes Ricky is a ticking time bomb on a rampage of revenge. On the eve of Halloween, as night comes, everything explodes…
Single mother Sarah Palmer hides her family in Oregon when her daughter Christy becomes a key witness in a murder against the mob.
Mizuki’s husband Yusuke went missing for 3 years. He suddenly comes back home one day and asks Mizuki to go on a trip with him. Their trip consists of visiting the people that helped Yusuke on his previous travel. While travelling together, Misuki sees, touches and feels what Yusuke did for those 3 years.
Danny DeVito plays an advertising man who is slowly sliding downhill. When he is fired from his job in Detroit, he signs up for unemployment. One day they find him a job; Teaching thinking skills to Army recruits. He arrives on base to find that there is no structure set up for the class.
Expecting the usual tedium that accompanies a summer in the Catskills with her family, 17-year-old Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman is surprised to find herself stepping into the shoes of a professional hoofer – and unexpectedly falling in love.
Adam, a lonely man with Asperger’s Syndrome, develops a relationship with his upstairs neighbor, Beth.
A small town girl is caught between dead-end jobs. A high-profile, successful man becomes wheelchair bound following an accident. The man decides his life is not worth living until the girl is hired for six months to be his new caretaker. Worlds apart and trapped together by circumstance, the two get off to a rocky start. But the girl becomes determined to prove to the man that life is worth living and as they embark on a series of adventures together, each finds their world changing in ways neither of them could begin to imagine.
