Director: Bahman Ghobadi
Country: Iran
Year: 2002
Runtime: 110 minutes
Language: Farsi/Kurdish with English subtitles
Awards: Sao Paolo International Film Festival - International Jury Award, Chicago International Film Festival - Golden Plaque
MAROONED IN IRAQ offers a unique view of the Iraq-Iran war. In it, three Iranian Kurds—a father and two of his grown sons—embark on a perilous journey into the No Man’s Land of the Iraq-Iran border in what once was Kurdistan. The old man has heard that one of his former wives, Hanareh, is in trouble and needs help. Since he is still considered head of the family, the father orders his reluctant sons to accompany him. Knowing that the journey will be dangerous, the three pass themselves off as roving musicians. Losing nearly all they possess to bandits, they follow Hanareh’s trail into the Iraqi/Kurd refugee camps on the Iranian side of the border. They find the remains of towns destroyed by Saddam Hussein’s armies, the deformed and dying victims—mostly women and children—of Iraq’s chemical attacks on the Kurds. Do they find Hanareh? Why has she summoned them? You’ll have to see the film for yourself, for it has a surprise ending which we won’t reveal here. What we will reveal is that MAROONED IN IRAQ is vastly entertaining, though grim. Comic interludes and native songs, sung to authentic musical instruments, are interspersed within the sad commentary on Saddam’s brutality. To better understand the Iraq-Iran conflict, to catch glimpses into Arab tribal life rarely open to Westerners, or simply to be entertained by a fine piece of filmmaking—you’ll want to see MAROONED IN IRAQ. From Director Bahman Ghobadi—born in Iran (1968), director of the equally stunning A Time for Drunken Horses (2000). ~ Nick Salerno
Principal Cast: Shahab Ebrahimi, Allah-morad Rashtian, Faegh Mohammadi, Airan Ghobadi Contac
Written by: Bahman Ghobadi
Producer: Bahman Ghobadi
Cinematographer: Saed Nikzat
Film Editor: Haydeh Safi-Yari