By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3.5 cats
Director: Bahman Ghobadi
Starring: Hedye Tehrani | Ismail Ghaffari | Kambiz Arshi
Original language title: Niwemang
Country: austria, france, iran, iraq
Year: 2006
Running time: 108
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0847050/reference
Beth says: “Apologies I don’t have a reference nearby and don’t exactly remember the director’s name, but he did TURTLES
CAN FLY, a previous TIFF favorite. Like all of his films, this one dealt with the lives of the Kurdish people – in this film, a famous Kurdish musician living in Iran tries to go to Iraqi Kurdistan to perform for the first time in decades – he plans for seven months as he awaits his authorization papers, then embarks on a journey to collect his sons who will perform with him, and his favorite accompanist, a female singer (which women are forbidden to do). He is sick and has been seeing visions of his death – the film is about his journey, in every sense. As in TURTLES, the director’s cinematography was epic and haunting; and once again his ability to hire non-actors perfect for the film is uncanny. That old man’s face will stay with me as long as the young girl’s eyes in TURTLE did. However, it got too confusing for me – at times it seemed like he created obstacles to get to a certain visual set-up, and by the end I wasn’t sure at all if any of it was supposed to be really happening. And yet – at the Q&A afterwards, he said that the film was based on a true story. So this is one that I give a 3.5 cats for myself, but for someone who has a familiarity with the world, perhaps it might be a 4.
“Speaking of, one of the things about this film was that he had been invited by a group in Vienna to make a film in honor of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth – seven were made, and TIFF is showcasing them this year. And as he made the film, the director said that he self-censored himself quite a bit, particularly with the music, because he didn’t want to provoke too much controversy in Iran. Nevertheless, he found out two days ago that his film has been banned in Iran, and on the basis of it being ‘separatist’ in its spirit. You could see how sad this made him, that it truly surprised him to find this out. Afterwards at the end of the Q&A a member in the audience speaking Turkish apparently (the translator said she couldn’t translate it) upbraided the director for self-censoring, and got some applause when he said that – as some members of the audience reacted both to that man and the director’s response, (we all protest as best we can), it suddenly hit me like a ton of bricks, and I got choked up that I had started the night watching a film that showed the start of partition’s effect upon a country (Ireland), and ended it with the legacy of partition upon a people (the Kurdish). 3 ½ cats”