A TV crew arrives in a remote Kurdish village to shoot an unusual funeral rite. But the local reality turns out to be somewhat a “trap” for the protagonists: an impregnable fortress, falling into which they begin to get lost in their perception of reality. Kiarostami’s most poetic and “elusive” film was awarded the Silver Lion at the 1999 Venice Film Festival. Garage Screen presents the Russian premiere of its restored version.
The main character and his colleagues arrive in a remote Kurdish village, where one of its oldest female inhabitants is dying. In compliance with ancient customs, the locals are going to conduct a very unusual funeral rite. The newly-arrived protagonists want to document the ritual, but the reality, wherein they find themselves, abides according to its own laws, turning out to be unpredictable and puzzling, eluding their perception and understanding.
With its title referencing the lines of the famous Iranian modernist poet and film director Forough Farrokhzad, The Wind Will Carry Us is one of Kiarostami’s most visually lyrical works. The interweaving of the visible and invisible, the seen and hidden, presence and absence reaches a new level of transparency and mystery here. One of the key late-twentieth-century films, it is considered the pinnacle of Kiarostami’s poetics and his last “classic” film before entering the “digital” period.
The Wind Will Carry Us
Dir. Abbas Kiarostami
Iran, France, 1999. 118 min. 16+