Blackboards

The inexplicable winner of an award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, this excruciatingly bad film by Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf is about as much fun as a grouchy ayatollah in a cold mosque. Set in the mountains of the Kurdish region along the Iran-Iraq border, the film follows two shabby teachers who carry oversized blackboards on their backs and vainly seek students for their lessons, wandering through dismally poor villages where no one is even vaguely interested in their services. One teacher strangely attaches himself to a group of boys involved in smuggling contraband goods between Iran and Iraq; the boys barely tolerate him and endlessly repeat they cannot survive if they abandon their smuggling work and sit down for schoolwork. The other teacher falls in with a large band of elderly Kurdish men and one attractive young woman in a seemingly endless trek to their native village, badgering the travelers for payment in exchange for his lessons. Blackboards scores a zero on every level: the non-professional cast has no acting talent, the story makes absolutely no sense, and the film has the strange habit of presenting the Kurdish people as either criminals or idiots. Not recommended. [Note: DVD extras include the 73-minute “making of” documentary “How Samira Made the Blackboard,” a text interview with writer-director Samira Makhmalbaf, cast and crew filmographies, trailers, and weblinks. Bottom line: a decent extras package for a disappointing film.] (P. Hall)