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T he year 2016 saw the release of two very interesting award-winning films from two countries from two continents.  Both films deal with the father-daughter protective relationship under different patriarchal scenarios.  Daughter is an Iranian film and presents an interesting tale set in a society where the male members of the family protect their wives and their daughters until they are married with a ferocity that might surprise many in Western developed countries. Graduation is a Romanian film with another interesting tale where the father travels the proverbial extra mile to ensure his daughter benefits from a prized graduate education outside his country that will help her in future life.  The only basic difference between the two films is that the women in Romania enjoy a greater freedom of action compared to the male dominated Iran.  In both films, the women have the last word. How interesting it is to find parallel tales emerging from two different communiti...

V ery few films deal with philosophy and ethical human choices under extreme testing situations.  The Fifth Seal is one that not only presents a philosophical dilemma on screen but will make any intelligent and sensitive viewer to ponder over his or her own choice under similar circumstances.  The film directed by Zoltan Fabri (1917-94) won the Golden Prize of the Moscow Film Festival in 1977. The film is based on a novel written by Ferenc Santa, arguably the finest Hungarian writer who has won almost all the top honours in that country. Santa himself wrote the screenplay of the film and, therefore, one can guess the film reflects the novel’s content pretty accurately.  This is the second work of Fabri that was based on a Ferenc Santa novel—the first being Twenty Hours (1965). Both films won the top award in the respective years at the Moscow Film Festival. The Fifth Seal is one of the top 100 films of this critic and the film made such a positive impact on him that he...