CANCELLED! (substituted by Man of Ashes, directed by ????? (Tunisia, 1986, 109 mins) "The Iran of the Ayatollahs would hardly seem fertile soil for innovative filmmaking, and when a film produced by an Iranian organization called the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Youth made its first Western appearance at the 1985 Venice Film Festival, hopes were not running high. But The Runner turned out to be an extraordinarily powerful work, bearing no trace of institutional or ecclesiastical tampering. Its story of a boy's determination to survive in a tough urban environment recalls such landmarks of neorealism as De Sica's Shoeshine, though tinged with surreal elements that also evoke the Buñuel of Los Olvidados. The film played to great acclaim at festivals in London, Nantes, Hong Kong and Sydney, but it has been impossible for it to be screened in the US until now. Director Amir Naderi is now living in the United States; thus we have a chance to see one of the most remarkable films of the eighties." Peter Scarlet