Product Description

A group of male teachers crossesma the mountainous paths of the remote Iranian Kurdistan region. They wander from village to village in search of students, carrying large blackboards on their backs, sometimes using them as shelter, camouflage and as shields for gunfire. One teacher ventures away from the group and meets up with a group of young boys who are carrying contraband across the border. Another teacher comes upon a group of old refugees who want to return to their village in Kurdistan, which was chemically attacked by the Iraqis. The teachers must also face other hardships and obstacles along the way, including unseen enemy helicopters and gunfire. Samira Makhmalbaf's award-winning film is a visually powerful and compelling depiction of a group of people who must battle for survival every day of their lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #74165 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-02-17
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 85 minutes

Customer Reviews

A powerful film, a participatory audience
This is a very artistic piece. Not a traditional film with beginning, end and simple plot. It is a weaving of moments, a soundtrack which gives you the chance to experience situations through your senses, and to understand WITHOUT words.

I sat through this film, not understanding, and feeling that I almost didn't like it. It didn't try to convince me.

It IS a powerful cinematic portrayal of hardship among kurds, a portrayal of minorities without representation in any national majority.

I understood that later, slowly, as it unfolded in my head. I can't truly describe it. You must find out for yourself the importance of a film like this.

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH...THE TOUGH GET GOING...
This is a film by a very young, Iranian filmmaker, Samira Makhmalbaf, who was nineteen years old at the time that she filmed it. She comes from an Iranian family steeped in the filmmaking tradition, as her father, Mosen Makhmalbaf, was a director. Her mother used to act in her husband's films, as did Samira, as a child. In fact, her father was the producer, as well as the co-screenwriter and editor, for this film.

This film, which received the 2000 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize, takes place in the Kurdistan region of Iran and was filmed in Kurdish. None of the performers are professional actors, except for Behnaz Jafari, who is a noted Iranian stage and film actress and plays the only female role in the film. Local village people were used for the other roles, except for the role of one of the teachers, which was played by a Kurdish filmmaker. The film was shot on location in the rugged mountainous terrain in the Kurdistan region of Iran, near the Iranian/Iraqi border.

The film tells the story of the poor people of Kurdistan, which is a region always struggling with problems caused by war. The film first centers on a band of itinerant Iranian school teachers who struggle to bring a modicum of education to the children of this war torn region. They travel with large blackboards on their backs and traipse up and down the steep mountain side, as poor as those whom they seek to teach. Their blackboards serve many functions, as the viewer will soon discover. Early on in the film, two teachers splinter off from the main group. The film proceeds to follow these two teachers on their respective journeys, where they will discover that education cannot find its niche in a land where the young need to work to survive, and adults simply want to return to their homeland to die.

One of the teachers encounters a group of boys who are mules for some contraband that they are paid to carry over the border on their backs. The other teacher encounters a group of Kurds who are seeking to return to their war torn homeland, Halabcheh, which is just over the Iraqi border. It is the actual site where Kurds had been subjected to the chemical warfare of the Iraqi regime. During the war between Iraq and Iran in the nineteen eighties, many Iraqi Kurds took refuge in Iran to escape chemical warfare. Both the children and the wandering Kurds, together with the teachers, face dangers and hardships along their way that most of those who view this film can only imagine.

This film is a visual eye-opener, a stark and shocking depiction of insular lives lived quite primitively. The only intrusion of the outside, modern world into the lives of these people is in the guise of sophisticated weaponry. This is an ambitious film that suffers from some lack of cohesion. It is, however, thematically complex, and its young director holds much promise. This is a film that those with an interest in other cultures will enjoy. If not, deduct one star from my rating.

Not bad but nothing special
A few years ago Iranian films were the choice for Guardian columnists telling us that they were the greatest thing you were ever likely to see. Sadly, its just not the case. Granted we don't exactly have a large choice of Iranian cinema in the West and most of it is one dimensional this film is sadly one of these.

The film centers around travelling school teachers, condemned by their peers for choosing a profession they could hardly make a living on (seeing as they have to travel with their blackboards on their backs desperately trying to find students in the mountains on the border between Iran and Iraq where most seem to be more interested in farming or smuggling)

One meets up with Kurdish nomads trying to return to their homeland while another meets up with children smuggling goods across the border. While the film does have some moments of interest much of it really is of the stereotype sell to the western audience variety. The Kurdish lady one of the teachers marries is this almost zombie like character who can barely string a sentence together. I really feel the best gauge of a film is to watch it with people from that geographical area and see what their impression is of it. Friends I know have either had a look of utter bemusement at this character or cracked up laughing a such a one dimensional character that looks more like a parody from an early evening TV comedy show in the middle east.

Then we have the smugglers, mostly children they are shot at by border guards, the teacher is forced to cut up his blackboard in order to use it as a splint but again, while some may see this film as 'an eye opener to an unknown part of the Middle East' its not really an issue unknown to anyone from that area. Everyone in Turkey knows about towns in the south east who have shopping areas with sometimes better electrical goods than you find in Istanbul brought in over the border, everyone in Iraq knows the same goes for Northern Iraq.

The sad thing is, this film does cover some serious issues. The heavy mining on the borders between Middle Eastern countries (Iran, Iraq, Turkey) and the effect on the ordinary people who live on those borders. Pity the film has no depth.