The Runner

This important work of the Iranian New Wave was hailed as one of the most remarkable films of the 1980s. The story of a boy’s determination to survive as he lives alone in an abandoned tanker in the port city of Abadan, the film has a kinship with such landmarks of neorealism as Vittorio De Sica’s Shoeshine, though tinged with surreal elements that also evoke the Luis Buñuel of Los olvidados. “A gem of the Iranian New Wave . . . crisply restored with improved subtitles . . . admirably lean and remarkably well-constructed . . . the light is often dazzling; the array of bottles floating in the harbor is bewitching . . . has a subtle fairy tale quality” (J. Hoberman, New York Times).