A time for drunken horses

A Time for Drunken Horses was a major break-through for Kurdish cinema at home and abroad: It was the first Kurdish feature film ever to be produced in Iran, and it screened in the competition programme in Cannes where it was awarded the Golden Camera for best debut film. It also gained popularity in Norway, and many an audience member must have left the cinema in tears after having watched it at a festival or at their local theatre.

Set in a remote Kurdish village in Iran, the film follows five siblings who live with their father, a single parent and a smuggler, working the mountains on the border to Iraq. One of the boys, Ayoub, works in a bazar, but after his father is involved in an accident, he is forced to take over the route. However, the little money he makes is not enough to pay for the operation that his younger brother Madj is desperately in need of. Can the children make is through the crisis and still stay together?

A film about life and death, and one that blurs the lines between fiction and reality, A time for Drunken Horses originally screened at Films from the South in 2001.

Bahman Ghobadi (b. 1969) was born in the Kurdish city of Baneh. After graduating from film school he directed a series of short films before making his debut with A Time For Drunken Horses. Ghobadi has achieved great acclaim for many of his later films, including Turtles Can Fly (2004) and Half Moon (2006).