Event
Radio Dreams
The newest feature film from Iranian-British director Babak Jalali (FRONTIER BLUES), RADIO DREAMS creates the strange yet very realistic world of PARS-FM – a Farsi-language radio station broadcasting from the heart of San Francisco.
The story unfolds over a single day as the station’s program manager, Hamid – a brilliant, misunderstood Iranian writer (played by the “Iranian Bob Dylan” Mohsen Namjoo) – prepares for a triumphant broadcast – a live performance pairing Metallica and Kabul Dreams, Afghanistan’s first rock band.
Meanwhile, Hamid must juggle a dysfunctional mix of on-air talent, station managers, and performers while fending off the owner’s plans to wrest control of the station.
With gentle humor and a deadpan eye towards cultural differences, RADIO DREAMS brings to life the sometimes bizarre experience of immigrants pursuing dreams in the U.S. with a mixture of honesty, art, and socio-political topicality.
WINNER – 2016 Hivos Tiger Award for Best Picture – 45th Rotterdam International Film Festival
WINNER – Best Director & Special Jury Mention – 2016 Seattle International Film Festival
WINNER – Best Director – Andrey Tarkovsky Film Festival, Russia
WINNER – Best Actor – Durban International Film Festival
"The quirky setups, oddball interactions and erratic conflicts ... provide ample doses of amusement and provocation to keep things afloat."
"Director and scriptwriter Babak Jalali cleverly uses the station's ramshackle, microbudget operations to highlight the humanity on both sides of the struggle between art and commerce (it's almost like a wrestling match...)"
""Radio Dreams" is a quintessentially American story."
"We want additional time with these characters, and that's a credit to this film: Like Hamid, we yearn for even more."
