A Time for Drunken Horses (2000)
"Zamani barayé masti asbha" (original title)

Young Iranian Kurds (brothers and sisters) try to save the youngest of them, who is seriously ill.

Director:

Bahman Ghobadi

Writer:

Bahman Ghobadi

Stars:

Ayoub Ahmadi, Rojin Younessi, Amaneh Ekhtiar-dini

11 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview:
Ayoub Ahmadi	...	Ayoub
Rojin Younessi	...	Rojin
Amaneh Ekhtiar-dini	...	Ameneh
Madi Ekhtiar-dini	...	Madi
Kolsolum Ekhtiar-dini
Karim Ekhtiar-dini
Rahman Salehi
Osman Karimi
Nezhad Ekhtiar-dini

Storyline

After their father dies, a family of five are forced to survive on their own in a Kurdish village on the border of Iran and Iraq. Matters are made worse when 12 year old Ayoub, the new head of the family, is told that his handicapped brother, Madi, needs an immediate operation in order to remain alive. This heartbreaking tale shows the lengths to which a family will go in order to survive in the harshest of conditions, where even the horses are fed liquor in order to work.

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Plot Keywords:

kurd | iraq | iran | husband wife relationship | kurdistan | 

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Genres:

Drama | War

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Details

Country:

Iran

Language:

Kurdish Persian

Release Date:

13 September 2000 (France)

Also Known As:

Intoxication for Horses

Box Office

Opening Weekend:

$42,188 (USA) (27 October 2000)

Gross:

$700,159 (USA) (4 May 2001)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bahman Ghobadi Films, Farabi Cinema Foundation, MK2 Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

80 min 85 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The first feature film in Kurdish, a language which was banned in Iranian schools since the 1940s, to achieve an international release.

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Connections

Remake of Zendegi dar meh (1999)

User Reviews

Some real family values in a stark landscape

Kurdistan isn't in your atlas, but it exists, the land of a people ignored by the post-Ottoman empire boundary makers and now living in eastern Turkey, northern Iraq and north-western Iran. This movie is set in a mountainous part of the Iraq-Iran border where the local Kurds eke out a living smuggling tea and tractor tyres by mule train from Iran into Iraq. (The return cargo seems to be school exercise books – what the mullahs of Iran have got against those I cannot imagine). No doubt they (the Iranian Kurds) are not on President Bush's Christmas card list, but their main customers are likely to be Kurds on the Iraqi side. The main problem though is not the authorities but bandits, eager to knock off the smuggler's loads.

The hero here is 12 year old Ayoub, who has to follow in his father's footsteps after the death of his father on a smuggling trip. As Dad stepped on a landmine this is a dangerous undertaking but Ayoub is determined to earn enough money for a operation to prolong the life (if only for a few months) of his severely crippled and retarded older brother. This sounds like blatant melodramatic manipulation, and it is, but it works.

Why does it work? There's the cinemaphotography, so perfectly lit and composed you might as well be standing there. There is excellent use of hand-held cameras, especially on the trail sequences. None of the actors is professional and the whole thing has a documentary air. Above all, the emotional bonds between the characters ring true. Perhaps when you have next to nothing your family becomes all-important, though the kinship bonds here seen to weaken quickly outside the immediate family circle. Kurdistan is a tough place and people are hard, and there's not much community support for the weak and frail. The young are expected to shape up fast, or fall by the wayside. As for the horses, well, animal rights activists would be run out of town.

Yet there is a stark beauty about the film that makes it hard to dismiss – the slow pace grows on you. Ayoub may be going to grow up as just another tough, ignorant, sexist tribesman, but we glimpse here (he is going to school) that he might do better. This is a remarkable and different film and a very good antidote to the recent stream of romantic comedies.