The Blood Countess review – Isabelle Huppert reigns supreme in a surreal vampire fantasia

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Vienna turns into a playground of camp, cruelty and aristocratic disdain in a blackly comic take on the Báthory legend – with Huppert gloriously suited to the title role From the dark heart of central Europe comes a midnight-movie romp through the moonlit urban glades of Euro-goth and camp from German director Ulrike Ottinger. As for the star … well, it’s the part she was born to play. Isabelle Huppert is Countess Elizabeth Báthory, 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman and serial killer, legendary for having the blood of hundreds of young girls on her hands and indeed her body, in an attempt to attain eternal youth. The “blood countess” has been variously played in the past by Ingrid Pitt, Delphine Seyrig, Paloma Picasso, Julie Delpy and many more, but surely none were as qualified as Huppert who importantly does not modify her habitual hauteur one iota for the role. Her natural aristocratic mien and cool hint of elegant contempt were never so well matched with a part. She gives us the ...
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Ebrahim Golestan obituary

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Iranian writer and film-maker who was a prominent figure in the country’s new wave of cinema

When a consortium of western oil companies took over the operation of the Iranian oil industry in 1954, Ebrahim Golestan, one of Iran’s leading intellectuals and writers, was recruited to work in public relations at the new company and put in charge of making educational films.

In 1957 he founded his own Golestan Studios and in 1959, after he had severed ties with the oil consortium, he negotiated the buyout of the equipment with which he had made their documentaries. With this equipment, his studio became the most sophisticated centre for film-making in Iran.

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