Cinema
The Traveler
مسافر
Abbas Kiarostami · 1974
Synopsis
In Malayer, a small provincial town, Qassem, twelve years old, thinks only of football and very little of school. To go and see a big match at the stadium in Tehran, some two hundred and forty kilometres away, he needs the price of the coach and of the ticket: he sells his team's ball and goals, and, with a camera that has no film, charges the schoolchildren for portraits they will never receive. Then he leaves alone, at night.
Context
The film was shot for the Kanun, in the streets of Malayer, with non-professional performers: Hassan Darabi, who plays Qassem, never had another role. The music is by Kambiz Roshanravan. The film lingers on the town, its merchants and its craftsmen, then on the arrival of coaches in Tehran. Sixteen years later, in Close-up, Hossein Sabzian would say that he recognised himself in the other boy, the one who is left behind. The film was released in the United States by Criterion, as a supplement to Close-up.
Who it is for
A film in Persian, in black and white, of a little over an hour. It helps to know that the hero hardly attracts sympathy, and that the ending is drily ironic.
Prizes and reception
Often regarded as its author's first feature film, it already bears his hallmarks: non-professional actors, real settings, a stubborn childhood.