Stars: Ayoub Ahmadi, Rojin Younessi, Amaneh Ekhtiar-Dini, Nezhad Ekhtiar-Dini

Director: Bahman Ghobadi

Summary: Three Kurdish children spend their days working in a export factory and they are forced into the mountains of Iraq when the truck that they are travelling in is captured by soldiers. There they become involved in the mule-trains... Farsi and Kurdish dialogue with subtitles.

Bahman Ghobadi's tragic, yet unsentimental first feature is influenced by his own childhood in Iran's Kurdistan. In a remote Kurdish village on the Iran-Iraq border, five motherless children endure hardscrabble lives, as heavily burdened by responsibility and loss as a smuggler's mule. Ayoub (Ayoub Ahmadi) and his young sister, Ameneh (Ameneh Ekhtiar-Dini) work at a bazaar to earn money, while simultaneously caring for their tiny, ill brother, Madi (Mehdi Ekhtiar-Dini), who suffers from a form of dwarfism. When a landmine kills their smuggler father, Ayoub must provide for the family, despite his young age. He joins the smugglers, carrying heavy loads on his back through the snowy mountains toward Iraq, while dodging the constant threat of ambush and mines. Pressure on Ayoub increases as poor Madi's illness worsens. An operation in Iraq is Madi's only hope, yet Ayoub's earnings barely cover the family's necessities. A possible solution arises when the children's eldest sister, Rojin (Rojin Younessi) enters an arranged marriage with an Iraqi, who promises to pay for the operation. With its sparse dialogue, rough settings, and intimate view of Kurdish life, Ghobadi's first feature film is a simply told and very powerful tale.

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Bahman Gobadi's intense quasi-documentary A Time for Drunken Horsesdeals with the lives of a young family of Kurds on the Iran/Iraq border. Their father has died in a landmine incident while smuggling and young Ayoub leaves school in an attempt to feed his siblings and find money for surgery on his crippled brother Madi. Things go from bad to worse: a marriage contract is reneged upon and we last see Ayoub and Madi trudging with a mule drugged against the cold with liquor through the snows of the high border hills as wolves howl in the distance. A few scenes remind us that this poverty is not an accident, but part of a system of actual and cultural oppression: soldiers frisk a group of children and confiscate exercise books; Ayoub spends money on a picture of a Western body-builder for Madi; they and their sisters spend evenings listening to a crackling transistor radio. There is a bracing purity to some of these images of stark suffering which shames much mo! re obviously artistic or popular film-making.

On the DVD:A Time for Drunken Horseshas trailers but no more elaborate special features. The DVD is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen and has simple but effective Dolby Stereo sound. --Roz Kaveney

Aspect Ratio:	Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	Farsi, Kurdish
Region:	Region 0
Special Features:	Scene Selection, Star And Director Filmographies, Original Theatrical Trailer, World Cinema Trailer Reel
Subtitles:	English
Year:	2000
Release Date:	January 27, 2003
Runtime:	75 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	T V D 3400
Keywords:	Time, Subtitled, General, Wide, Screen, Drunken, Horses, Drama, Farsi, Kurdish, Ashba, Baraye, Masti, Zamani
Genre:	Drama