If you enjoy unique film fare that educates and provides an emotional punch find a copy of A Time for Drunken Horses (Zamani barayé masti asbha). Bahman Ghobadi’s debut feature marks the first film to come out of Kurdistan, and the filmmaker has gone well beyond the concepts of French New Wave cinema to create a realistic fictional film using non-professional actors. Few Americans realize the situation of the Kurds, a large minority of 30 million without an authentic homeland who live desperate lives in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq. The family depicted in Ghobadi’s film comes from the harshest and most impoverished area on the mountainous Iraqi-Iranian border, from the 10,000 or so Kurds who have endured a 10-year war.

Adding to the realism is the fact that the three main children are from the same family in real life, and they come from the Kurdistan region. In a long opening introductory screen, Ghobadi explains how his film is meant to be a tribute to his Kurdish culture, and tells us that the Kurds in the film "represent real people, whose brave struggle for survival I have personally witnessed."

What an amazing and courageous quest. After a confusing opening sequence set in a Kurdistan bazaar, where 12-year old Ayoub (Ayoub Ahmadi) and his younger sister Amaneh (Amaneh Ekhtiar-Dini) wrap glassware for pennies and help a smuggler bring exercise books across the border. True to the real situation of the many orphans who lost their parents to warfare and landmines, Ayoub and Amaneh have already lost their mother and don’t know where their father is. They also have a sickly crippled dwarf brother Madi (Madi Ekhtiar-Dini), who needs continual care and needs an operation badly just to live another 6 months.

There is a semblance of a plot, but the film feels more like an intimate glimpse into the impoverished lifestyle of the Kurds living on the borders of northern Iraq: a beautifully photographed wood chopping sequence, alternating between close-ups of young Ayoub, the axe, the wood cuts, and brilliant framing shots that capture the whole scene against the snow and icy cold blues of the sky. There’s also a tender scene between Ayoub and Amaneh, as the young girl proudly displays her completed exercise book (demonstrating how important education is to these people).

Amaneh serves effectively as the narrator, and Ayoub becomes the main protagonist, but the focus revolves around little Madi. To drive the film beyond the harsh daily life, Madi provides the motivation for the plot. The most touching moments show how the siblings love their sick brother and sacrifice everything they have to serve him. Indeed, the first thing that Ayoub purchases after getting the more lucrative job of packing supplies by mule and backpack to the bazaar, is a picture to put a smile on Madi’s face.

Without parents and without a rich uncle Ayoub knows that he must make more money to enable Madi to get an operation. Thus, he takes on the difficult task of packing supplies to the bazaar, discovering how dishonest the merchants can be and occasionally fleeing from ambushes over the mountains. He later decides that he must sell his mule to get the operation money, so Madi really does supply the motivation and forms the emotional core of the film.

Avoiding sentimentality, Ghobadi shows a pitiful Madi crying at his weekly injection, shivering in a side pack off a mule, and heartbreakingly look on in the freezing wind and snow as an Iraqi family argues about taking him in. This is no manipulative Pay it Forward film trip, designed to pull falsely at the heartstrings. A Time for Drunken Horses is all too real!

Deservedly sharing the Camera d’Or prize at Cannes and winning the Special Jury Prize at the Chicago International Festival, the film often communicates most effectively visually without narration. Witness the times we see the troop of children trudging through snowbound mountains that make Dr. Zhivago or the planet Hoth look like a McDonald’s playground. Knowing that this film is shot on location makes it all the more chilling.

Ghobadi captures the emotional tone of the struggling family through a mostly hand held camera shot documentary style. To get the children to act more naturally, Ghobadi and film crew practically lived with the family and let the camera become a regular prop so that the children wouldn’t "freeze."

Realism is Ghobadi’s goal, and he accomplishes this as well as any "fictional" film that I can recall. As Ghobadi tells interviewer Mike Vari at the Chicago festival, "I hope when you leave the theater after my film you have lived with these children and have shared their pain."


Ghobadi’s mission is accomplished. People who don’t feel this way must have had their senses numbed by too many nights of cold news stories objectively describing the plight of the Kurds without giving them names and faces. While some may view A Time for Drunken Horsess in political terms, Ghobadi shows little interest in political statements. Instead we live with this family for 80 minutes, celebrating their joys, sharing their concerns, and feeling the hardship.

I now have much more empathy for the Kurds and understand more about their culture than I did before seeing Ghobadi’s film. It’s not always a comfortable picture, and may not suit American audiences used to seeing imaginary people solve all their problems happily by the end, but it’s one of the most important films of the year.

(Note: A Time for Drunken Horses is the international English name for Zamani barayé masti asbha, and refers to the alcohol that they put in the drinking water for the mules to lessen the effects of the bitter cold. The film is spoken in Farsi, Kurdish, and Persian with English subtitles)