The President

An iron-fisted tyrant finds himself on the run—with only his young grandson as company—in Makhmalbaf’s modern parable of power and uprising, inspired by the Arab Spring and its accompanying discontents. A sudden coup turns an unnamed country’s once-powerful president and his grandson into fugitives; posing as street musicians, they seek refuge among the very people this dictator once oppressed, as new savagery emerges across the land. Filmed in Georgia with an all-Georgian cast, this “formidable political parable, with echoes of Twain and Beckett” (Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian) underlines how violence begets violence, and envisions what can be done to break the circle.