The poster of one of the films — The Time That Remains — to be screened by the Film Society of Bhubaneswar at Jayadev Bhavan on Saturday

Bhubaneswar, Sept. 18: Film buffs, it’s that time of the month again when you can kick back and watch some movie classics.

The Film Society of Bhubaneswar will show an Israeli and an Iranian film during its monthly screening this time. The screening for the members will take place at Jayadev Bhavan on Saturday.

The first screening of the evening is Israeli film The Time That Remains. The 2009 film is written and directed by internationally acclaimed Palestinian director Elia Suleiman. Covering the years from 1948 — the year the state of Israel was created — to the present day, the film is a warm, sensitive and semi-biographical representation of Palestinians living as a minority in their own homeland.

The filmmaker has not only banked on his own memories but drawn inspiration from his father’s diary entries and letters sent by his mother to family members who had fled the Israeli occupation.

The film recounts the saga of the filmmaker’s family in subtly comical vignettes and reflects upon life among the Israeli Arab community. The 109-minute film was screened at the Cannes and Toronto International Film Festivals.

The second screening of the evening, Close-Up (1995), directed by the renowned Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, is part of the society’s ‘Classics Revisited’ section. Kiarostami has created some of the most imaginative and transcendent cinema of the past 30 years, and Close-up remains one of his most radical and brilliant works.

This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event. A young man is arrested on charges of fraudulently impersonating well-known Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. This storyline forms the basis of a stunning, multi-layered investigation into cinema and its identity, artistic creation and sheer existence. Real people from the case play themselves in the film that has a running time of 100 minutes. With its universal theme and fascinating narrative knots, the ageless film has resonated with viewers around the world.

“Both films are very interesting. They present real-life incidents in an engaging manner. The members will be glad to watch them,” said Jagat Basa, a member of the society.