Blackboards

The starkly desolate mountains of Kurdish Iran serve as backdrop for Samira Makhmalbaf’s second feature, which follows a group of itinerant teachers, heavy blackboards on their backs, trudging through the landscape in search of pupils. Education seems like a dream to those they meet, however, who think blackboards are better used as a gurney for a sick man, or as shields from gunfire. Makhmalbaf punctures documentary-like observational footage with startling, almost hallucinogenic moments (“almost like an art installation in the desert,” as The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote). The result is both a realist portrait of nomadic Kurdish culture and an absurdist, Beckett-like allegory, all set in a landscape that would turn even John Ford’s eye. “There is something distinctively surreal and almost ludic about Makhmalbaf’s vision that envelops its elements of pathos and political anger in a sheen of mystery and enigma,” Bradshaw noted. “The poetry and tenderness of her film are compelling.”