Director: Bahman Ghobadi
Script: Bahman Ghobadi
Cinematographer: Saed Nikzat, Shahriar Assadi
Music: Arsalan Kamkar
Editor: Hayedeh Safiyari
Cast: Shahab Ebrahimi, Allah-Morad Rashtian, Faegh Mohamadi
Production: Bahman Ghobadi
Distribution:
Colifilms Distribution
17 rue de Chéroy
75017 Paris
France
Tel: 0033 1.42.94.25.43
Fax: 0033 1.42.94.17.05
Mail: [email protected]
Year: 2002
35 mm, Colour, 103 min
OV Kurdish with French Subtitles
Unreleased
Un Certain Regard - Cannes Film Festival 2002
During the months following the Iran-Iraq war, while the Kurdish villages are continuously bombed by the Iraqi airforce, Mirza, an Iranian-Kurdish singer, is driving a sidecar with his two sons, Audeh and Barat. He is searching for Hanareh, his wife who has disappeared. She was a famous Kurdish singer. In their search, they witness horror in different forms: villages razed to the ground, huge mass grave, women disfigured by chemical weapons, orphans in camps, the unbearable reality of the Kurdish genocide. Life goes on, at times with a sense of humour when the old father and his two sons are put in comic situations, or when a song defies the bombs. In an open air classroom, a school master teaches the pupils about planes while, above them, bombers are crossing the sky.
Songs from my mother's land or A Marooned in Iraq is the second film directed by Bahman Ghobadi who had been awarded the Golden Camera in Cannes 2000 for his film A time for drunken Horses. Poetry, humour and music are the most efficient ways here to counteract what is unspeakable and, within the space of a few frames, make us share the tragedy of a whole people..
