Der Wind wird uns tragen (1999)

Der Wind wird uns tragen: Directed by Abbas Kiarostami. With Behzad Dorani, Noghre Asadi, Roushan Karam Elmi, Bahman Ghobadi. Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.

“Beautifully photographed, loaded with all sorts of little things which do much to contribute to the filmu0026#39;s overall sense of everything big and small, and ever so slyly filled with humor, Kiarostami has created a great film here about people whom we see and donu0026#39;t see (We never see the u0026quot;engineeru0026#39;su0026quot; crew, the man digging the deep ditch at the cemetery, the the supposedly dying old woman, the girl in the cave milking the cow for the engineer). I know this remote village is not Tehran but I see no false note in Kiarstamiu0026#39;s depiction of his own people (He would certainly know better than any of us.) The film crew is from Tehran, and, as personified by the u0026quot;engineer,u0026quot; neither of these two representatives of Iranian culture are remotely religious fanatics. Theyu0026#39;re folks like me and you. Iu0026#39;m aware the Mullahs control Iran, and strict adherence to Muslim law is their credo, but we donu0026#39;t feel it from the villagers or film crew. Perhaps, when a country feels the great weight of a mighty army roaming the lands of its next door neighbor, its leaders are forced to take extremist positions. When their leaders hear George W. Bush implying Iran might be next, they may believe a nuclear deterrent is all they have. Bush should watch this film and get some sense of, at least, what a sizable portion of Iranu0026#39;s population is like, and maybe heu0026#39;ll stop the tough talk, though I doubt it.”