ShangLuda
Admirable film.
Ricardo Daly
The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.
Guillelmina
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Aspen Orson
There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.
woutervandersluis
Very believable struggle beween the traditional Kurdish sociëteit and modern western life. The romantic village life in Kurdistan is in this movie unmasked in a vilifying way. We long sometimes to that safety of simple life of this shepherd Zagros in a society were everything has its simple place and where you are one with the community where you live in. Like Zagros says it in the beginning of the movie sitting with his beautiful wife and sweet child in the Kurdish landscape and says that this is the most beautiful place in the world. I heard once a western journalist say in a documentary about life in the Kaukasus meeting people demonstrating and celebrating their oneness in such a village: "You live in a real community. We westerners lost our tribe." And yes we do have that feeling of loss living our individualistic often lonely western lifes. We go on holidays to tiny Italian villages, old little towns in Bulgaria, kampungs on Bali to experience the seemingly harmonious life where people feel close and caring for each other.
But this film demonstrates how oppressive such a traditional community can be. We see a few people trying to free themselves from that tiranny of gossip and strict traditions by emigrating to the modern west. If this works is put into question. Escaping to the west one always takes the belief in the conventions of the tradition with him or her. In this movie only the people who are traumatized deeply by the terror of the traditional village make a successful escape because they don't see a way back. But also for them the village will always come after them.
