Cinema
Bashu, the Little Stranger
باشو غریبه کوچک
Bahram Beyzai · 1989
Synopsis
During the war between Iran and Iraq, Bashu, a boy from the South, loses his home and his whole family in a bombing. Terrified, he hides in a lorry that leaves the region and gets off in the North, where everything, from the landscape to the language, is foreign to him. There he meets Naii, a peasant woman who is bringing up her two children alone on her farm while her husband has gone to look for work. Despite the language barrier and the hostility of the villagers, a bond forms between them.
Context
The film, produced in 1986 with the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children, was not released until February 1989: after five trial screenings, the authorities had held it back and demanded seventy-five changes, including the removal of Susan Taslimi's name from the head of the credits. A Gilak actress, she plays the role of Naii; Adnan Afravian, who plays Bashu, was spotted by her among the spectators at a football match in Ahvaz. The author wrote, edited and directed the film, with cinematography by Firouz Malekzadeh.
Who it is for
A film in Persian, Gilaki and Khuzestani Arabic, two hours long. It helps to know that the child and the peasant woman do not understand each other, and that the film plays on this incomprehension.
Prizes and reception
Voted the best Iranian film of all time in 1999 by one hundred and fifty critics and professionals consulted by the magazine Picture World.