Marooned in Iraq

While the war between Iran and Iraq is going on, a group of Iranian Kurdish musicians sets out on a nearly impossible journey. The person they are looking for is Hanareh, a singer with a fine voice who has crossed the border. She is thought to be in danger in Iraqi Kurdistan. Along the way come snowbound passes, checkpoints and people driven from their homes. The film gives music not as entertainment but as the one thing still binding people together. The account puts the oppression the Kurds live under at its centre and says so openly. The director had taken up the same matter in his earlier films. Shahab Ebrahimi and Saeed Mohammadi appear in Bahman Ghobadi’s hundred and eight minute Iranian film, completed in 2002.