A Time for Drunken Horses

Bahman Ghobadi's starkly moving film centers on a family of Kurdish orphans struggling to survive after the death of their father, a smuggler who (along with his fellow villagers) transported truck tires across the dangerous Iran-Iraq border on mules given alcohol to prepare them for the arduous trek. Suddenly becoming head of the household, young Ayoub (Ayoub Ahmadi) is forced to leave school not only to support his sisters but also to raise money for an operation for his crippled older brother, Madi (Madi Ekhtiar-dini). The heartbreaking story of Ayoud's travails both at home and on the smuggling trail, where he aims to take his dad's place, is all the more affecting for being told in near-documentary style, narrated matter of factly by one of his sisters, Ameneh (Ameneh Ekhtiar-dini). Shot in the forbidding snow-swept mountains of Kurdistan, A Time for Drunken Horses recalls the neorealist masterpieces of postwar Italy, skillfully capturing a bleak, unforgiving milieu while telling a simple, touching, and achingly realistic story using a nonprofessional cast who are wonderfully expressive, especially the children. Highly recommended. (F. Swietek)