A Moment Of Innocence (EOTWS)

End Of The Week Shorts #29 extract: A Moment Of Innocence (1996)

A Moment Of Innocent is a film that falls in the ranks of other movies such as The Chinese, 8 1/2, Day For Night and Interior. Leather Bar. in that it is a film about making a film, and so has many levels to its story bound together by questions of truth. 

Makhmalbaf takes this idea one step further by basing this film about making a film on his own life (possibly both past and present). In such, this is about recreating the moment in which he stabbed a police officer as a young man as to 'save the world'. This narrative then contemplates rebellion under the guise of naivety with sprinkles of comedy and much confusion throughout by contrasting the ideals and inner motivations of both the policeman - both young and old - and Makhmalbaf (who stabbed him) - also in his younger and older forms. This is done through the veil of cinema and other actors and so a network of emotion and subjectivity is constructed, leaving one confounding final frame that exudes ambiguity and a film that needs to be seen.