Checkpoint / Dead End
Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series 2026 UCLA Celebration of Iranian Cinema. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
In person: director Parviz Sayyad, actor Mary Apick.
Checkpoint (1987)
During the height of the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, a busload of Iranian college students returning to the U.S. after a field trip in Canada are thrown into political and legal limbo when they’re refused entry at the border. A ripped-from-the-headlines urgency drives writer-director Parviz Sayyad’s Checkpoint as the students split along factional lines in their struggle to reclaim their rights and dignity. Executive producer Mary Apick also leads a committed ensemble cast that never loses sight of the fragile, individual humanity ever at risk amid grand ideological clashes.
Director/Screenwriter: Parviz Sayyad. With: Mary Apick, Houshang Touzie, Parviz Sayyad.
Dead End (1977)
This provocative film stars Mary Apick as a young woman who is drawn to a mysterious suitor haunting the dead-end street where she lives, only to discover that he is not what he seems and she and her family may be in danger. A giant of Iranian cinema, writer-director Parviz Sayyad rose to fame as the star of the commercial Samad film and television series before producing some of the key works of the Iranian New Wave, including films by Sohrab Shahid Saless, Ebrahim Golestan and Dariush Mehrjui. Based on a short story by Anton Chekhov, Dead End plays with themes of voyeurism and surveillance in a society on the verge of radical transformation.
DCP. Director: Parviz Sayyad. Screenwriter: Parviz Sayyad, Houshang Baharlou. With: Mary Apick, Parviz Bahador, Apick Yousefian.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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