World War III

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World War III

2022

1h 47m

Comedy

Drama

War

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

100%

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8 Reviews

67%

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Ratings

Shakib is a homeless day laborer who never got over the loss of his wife and son in an earthquake years ago. Over the last couple of years, he has developed a relationship with a deaf and mute woman, Ladan. The construction site on which he works today turns out to be the set of a film about the atrocities committed by Hitler during WWII. Against all odds, he is given a movie role, a house and a chance at being somebody. When Ladan learns about this, she comes to his workplace begging for help. Shakib's scheme to hide her goes tragically wrong and threatens to ruin his newfound status and what seemed to be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Namrata Joshi

The New Indian Express

Like Parasite it invokes endemic inequities through architectural verticality. Like the semi-basements and bunkers in Korea, the dispossessed are confined under the earth, the Netherworld of sorts in the Iranian film...

Apr 3, 2023

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Kathleen Sachs

Chicago Reader

The questions it raises—as to what’s going on, who’s telling the truth, and the degree to which parallels between the movie in the film and Shakib’s dilemma are intentional—certainly account for a heightened level of ambiguity.

Feb 11, 2023

Full Review

Amarsanaa Battulga

View of the Arts

Bound to surprise audiences and bag awards, World War III is a film that makes you look forward to the next film that rhymes, if not repeats, its brilliance.

Rated: 5/5

Aug 1, 2024

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Walter Chaw

Film Freak Central

It shouldn't work, but it works like a Swiss timepiece, clicking along invisibly and betraying nothing while moving through a series of events that are at once entirely unpredictable and the only things that could possibly happen in hindsight.

Jan 4, 2024

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Frank J. Avella

Awards Daily

Houman Seyedi’s startling, audacious and truly entrancing satire, World War III, deserved (Oscar) consideration...Seyedi and (his) co-screenwriters searingly comment on power, class and how everyone has a breaking point. And the ending is priceless.

Rated: A

Dec 27, 2022

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Nicholas Bell

IONCINEMA.com

Both sharply conceived and agonizingly performed, Seyyedi... presents a hot blast of social issue semantics defined by a direct conduit with a criminal underbelly often downplayed significantly in modern Iranian cinema.

Rated: 4/5

Oct 11, 2022

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Houman Seyyedi

Director

Mohsen Tanabandeh

Shakib

Neda Jebraeili

Zare

Mahsa Hejazi

Ladan

Navid Nosrati

Nosrati

Houman Seyyedi

Screenwriter

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Synopsis

Shakib is a homeless day laborer who never got over the loss of his wife and son in an earthquake years ago. Over the last couple of years, he has developed a relationship with a deaf and mute woman, Ladan. The construction site on which he works today turns out to be the set of a film about the atrocities committed by Hitler during WWII. Against all odds, he is given a movie role, a house and a chance at being somebody. When Ladan learns about this, she comes to his workplace begging for help. Shakib's scheme to hide her goes tragically wrong and threatens to ruin his newfound status and what seemed to be the opportunity of a lifetime.

Director: Houman Seyyedi
Producer: Houman Seyyedi
Screenwriter: Houman Seyyedi, Arian Vazirdaftari, Azad Jafarian
Genre: Comedy, Drama, War
Original Language: Persian
Runtime: 1h 47m