‎The Apple (1998) directed by Samira Makhmalbaf • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd

The Apple

1998 ‘سیب’ Directed by Samira Makhmalbaf

After twelve years of imprisonment by their own parents, two sisters are finally released by social workers to face the outside world for the first time.

Massoumeh Naderi Zahra Naderi Ghorban Ali Naderi Azizeh Mohamadi Zahra Saghrisaz

86 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Sally Jane Black

Not long ago, I read this interview, which basically spells out the ideas in The Apple directly from the young director's mouth. It's a great interview, but having read it, it would be redundant of me to speak directly of the themes of the movie. In it, Makhmalbaf specifically cites the story of Adam and Eve as a direct parallel to her work here, however, and that stood out--I think also to the interviewer--in that she seems to directly call Satan's role in that story good.

I must admit, I have never given too much thought to the story of Adam and Eve. Had I been taught the story in my adult life, I can't say that I would not…
Review by Sara Gomes ★★★★

Berken's May 30 Days, 30 Countries Challenge Film nº 15 - Iran

Sib is a dramatized documentary about two girls who were locked up since birth and are "rescued" by the social services after a complaint filed by their neighbours.

With the principal characters played by themselves and some actual real footage, this film feels very real. The girls, the parents even the neighbours feel very alive.

The innocence of the girls making friends and wandering about for the first time really lights the mood for an actually very dramatic story about a really poor family, struck by misfortune and religion fundamentalism, with almost no education.

What's more interesting about this film is the showing of a story without judging anyone. The girls were locked up by their parents but specially the father is never shown like a real villain.

Sib is a really wonderful movie really worth watching.
Review by Natasha C. ★★★½

This was kind of hard to watch, it really touched me.
To me, ignorance is one of the worst's evils of life, it's sad and tough to see.
What conforts me is that that the world still have people caring for each other and taking care of each other =).
Review by Rod Sedgwick ★★★★

''A girl is like a flower, if the sun shines on her,
she will fade. A man's gaze is like the sun and a girl is like a flower.''

18 year old filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf said of Massoumeh and Zahra Naderi, who were the focus of her debut film The Apple: ''We shot this in 11 days, and during this 11 days, they changed more than during those 11 years, just because of having contact with us.''(the film crew), and it's easy to see the evidence of this blossoming throughout a film in which all the real people involved in this remarkable true story are cast to replay both real and fictional events to tell the story of two semi-retarded…
Review by Rembrandt Q Pumpernickel ★★★ 4

There's something about the sound of this film, the simplicity of almost everyone's words and actions, repetitive, like the banging of spoons, that achieves a musical and rhythmic quality. I like films that have that element to them, that are a bit hypnotizing in the way they sound.

Maybe the best film directed by an 18 year old (although she had her dad's help), but more metaphorical than aesthetically inventive. Rides the line between exposing the fictive elements of documentary, the documentary realities of narrative, and straight up exploitation pretty hard.

Getting harder to write reviews of everything. Not sure how Sally does it.
Review by Owen ★★★★

52 films by women – ultimate challenge 2017
Week 11: 13-19 March
From the Middle East

March around the world #15/30 Iran

Two of the best films I watched last year were Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 'Moment of Innocence' and Marzieh Makhmalbaf's 'The Day I became a Woman'. This film by their daughter Samira is almost as good and seems to have a lot in common with her parents work. It shares with Moment of Innocence quite a playful collision of documentary and fiction, or rather of the obvious staging of supposed documentary for the directors own ends. It shares with her mother's film, and indeed a lot of the Iranian cinema I have seen, a sense of deep injustices largely being…

Recent reviews

Review by Jpit ★★★★½

Samira Makhmalbafin 17-vuotiaana, yhdessä isänsä Mohsen Makhmalbafin (joka on myös editoinut elokuvan) kanssa käsikirjoitettu esikoisohjaus.

Sokea äiti ja vanha, työtön isä ovat pitäneet kahta tytärtään yksitoista vuotta vallan talon sisällä ja naapuruston kirjoittama yhteisvalitus saa sosiaalitoimiston puuttumaan asiaan. Elokuva perustuu tositapahtumiin ja siinä käytetään tositilanteen henkilöitä näyttelijöinä, vaikka se perustuukin käsikirjoitukseen ja sillä on fiktiivinen tarina. Tekeminen on kuitenkin alkanut lähes heti tapahtuman ilmettyä. Ohjaaja Samira Makhmalbaf meni heti asiasta kuultuaan sosiaalitoimistolle kuvaamaan (tämän takia elokuvan alku on kuvattu videolle), ennen kuin sai perheen isältä luvan kuvata heitä heidän kotinurkilla. Voi olla että olin kuullut tästä kaikesta joskus, ja elokuvaa katsoessa oli joku hämärä mielikuva tositapahtumiin perustumisesta, mutta sain kuitenkin kaiken tämän tietooni vasta katsomisen jälkeen.

Pelkistetty tyyli, jossa esimerkiksi…
Review by Sally Woodcock ★★★★★

10/10
Review by Alex Brannan ★★★★

The Apple is the feature film debut from then 18-year-old Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf. An influential cog in the machine of Iranian New Wave, as well as part of a family of filmmakers (her father is equally influential director Mohsen Makhmalbaf), Samira Makhmalbaf’s first film delves into the nuanced world of children raised in isolation in a docudrama style. Using a real-life family as both actor and subject, Makhmalbaf captures on film a fictional reality of two children first entering society at the age of 12 at the same time that the real-life children were first engaging with the world outside their home.

Greetings reader! Check out the full, in-depth review of The Apple here: cinefilesreviews.com/2016/04/04/the-psychology-philosophy-of-the-apple-1998-abusive-paternalism/
Review by gerbear93 ★★★★

Bad ass
Review by Charlotte Zhang

SAMIRA MAKHMALBAF MADE THIS WHEN SHE WAS 17 YEARS OLD
Review by Michael Stuhlman ★★★½

The kind of film I wished I liked a bit more than I did. It's not that it's bad or anything, but I think the immense hype combined with my mood sort of stifled a greater enjoyment. High on my revisit list.
Review by Sofia ★★★★½

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

A magical and special jewel. Crisp and sweet.
There's something about the innocent, inimitable youthfulness of the children, the simple but profound, poetic nature of the words spoken, transmitted through the minimalist power of the photography. The women of the story are the movers, the drivers, the carriers of that ancient, beautiful, and universal burden of their gender. With the blind, croaking and whispering mother, an eerie creature is born. As she grasps the apple in the final shot, is it hope I feel? Or a tinge of sadness? Who was she? She fell through the cracks with her disability but her daughters were given the chance to grow out of their own.
Review by Owen ★★★★

52 films by women – ultimate challenge 2017
Week 11: 13-19 March
From the Middle East

March around the world #15/30 Iran

Two of the best films I watched last year were Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 'Moment of Innocence' and Marzieh Makhmalbaf's 'The Day I became a Woman'. This film by their daughter Samira is almost as good and seems to have a lot in common with her parents work. It shares with Moment of Innocence quite a playful collision of documentary and fiction, or rather of the obvious staging of supposed documentary for the directors own ends. It shares with her mother's film, and indeed a lot of the Iranian cinema I have seen, a sense of deep injustices largely being…
Review by Peter Cox ★★★★★

Do you ever get the rare sensation, on watching a film for the first time, that you'll look back on it as key in your own personal journey through cinema?

The Apple feels like such a film for me. And that hopscotch scene is pure joy.