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Former JU basketball player Kevin Sheppard takes a star turn in “The Iran Job” documentary

Former JU basketball player Kevin Sheppard is getting some notice for his starring role in “The Iran Job,” a documentary that follows him as he  plays for a team in the Middle Eastern country.

The Florida Times-Union’s Matt Soergel blogged about it here, and Salon gave it a good review.

Here’s a clip from the movie trailer:

 

Some snippets below from the Salon piece:

The premise of “The Iran Job” sounds like a nutty idea for a sitcom: An African-American basketball player – a big, bluff, cheerful guy with a bit of a philosophical streak – goes to the Islamic Republic of Iran, not really knowing anything about the place except that it’s universally vilified by outsiders and that his family fears for his life. Throw in a trio of feisty and undeniably attractive Iranian women, who whip off the coats and headscarves as soon as they’re indoors, revealing themselves as severe fashion victims and eager consumers of smuggled cans of Tuborg beer. Not funny enough yet? How about a laconic, seven-foot-tall Serbian roommate, a building super from Afghanistan who speaks not a single word of English and a fast-food employee who prides himself on his elaborate imitations of African-American dance moves. Oh, and an attempt to find a Christmas tree in the provincial Iranian city of Shiraz, complicated by the fact that the Farsi word for “raisin” apparently sounds a lot like “Christmas.”

There’s even romantic confusion in “The Iran Job” — which despite its implausibility is a documentary that’s 100 percent true — and it ends up being more wistful and even tragic than hilarious. Kevin Sheppard, a onetime star at Jacksonville University turned international basketball gypsy, is either not cognizant (or, more likely, willfully ignorant) of the way Elaheh, the cutest, most dolled-up and most English-proficient of the Iranian troika, looks at him. Yes, it’s true that Sheppard has a girlfriend back home in the Virgin Islands, but as Elaheh and her pals observe rather pointedly, Skype is no replacement for the real thing.

See the full Salon review at http://www.salon.com/2012/10/09/the_iran_job_love_and_basketball_%E2%80%94_in_shiraz/