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Dir: Hana Makhmalbaf.
Cast: Nibakht Noruz, Abdolali Hosenali, Abbas Alijome
Description: Drama witnessing conflict in the Middle East and its terrible aftermath through the eyes of innocent youngster Baktay. The story focuses on the Afghani province of Bamian, where the Taliban famously destroyed two giant statues. Baktay's first day at school provides a harsh lesson in the realities of war for people in the war-torn region as the little girl tries to barter for rudimentary school supplies then faces a gang of bullies.
Country: IRAN. 2007. 77mins
Clutching at straws: poverty-stricken Baktay (Nikbakht Noruz) has to barter some eggs to pay for paper to use at school
Iran's Makhmalbaf family make films like most of us eat breakfast. This one is by 19-year-old Hana, who directed The Joy of Madness, a documentary about the making of her elder sister Samira's film, at Five in the afternoon. Rough and ready as it sometimes is, this broadside against the Taliban, set in the Afghan city of Bamian, works wonders at times.
Bamian is near the massive fifth-century Buddhist carvings that were destroyed by the Taliban, causing an international outcry. Hana's film has a smiling, poverty-stricken little girl called Baktay (Nikbakht Noruz) inspired by a neighbour's recitations to go to the local school. She hasn't even got a piece of paper or a pencil and has to barter some eggs to get them.
Her first lesson is on economics and it is well beyond her. The next is cultural studies, where she is threatened by a cabal of boys who persist in playing "Taliban". The bullies are easily equated with a stifling theocracy but the didactic nature of the film is leavened by its naturalistic playing. If this is what kids face, Hana suggests, imagine what adults have to go through. It may be naively done, but it still packs a punch. Iran, of course, does not support the Taliban, so the Makhmalbaf family's censorship problems back home do not apply here.
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