The Wind Will Carry Us | |
---|---|
Directed by | Abbas Kiarostami |
Produced by | Abbas Kiarostami |
Written by | Abbas Kiarostami |
Starring | Behzad Dorani |
Cinematography | Mahmoud Kalari |
Distributed by | New Yorker Films (USA) |
Release date
|
6 September 1999 (Venice Film Festival) |
Running time
|
118 min. |
Language | Persian |
The Wind Will Carry Us (Persian: باد ما را خواهد برد, Bād mā rā khāhad bord) is a 1999 Iranian film by Abbas Kiarostami. The title is a reference to a poem written by the modern Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad.
The Wind Will Carry Us opened to widely positive reviews from critics; in 1999, it was nominated for the Golden Lion of the Venice Film Festival. It won the Grand Special Jury Prize (Silver Lion), the FIPRESCI Prize, and the CinemAvvenire award at the festival. It received numerous other nominations and awards as well.
Behzad, Keyvan, Ali and Jahan, journalists posing as production engineers, arrive in a Kurdish village to document the locals' mourning rituals that anticipate the death of an old woman, but she remains alive. The main engineer is forced to slow down and appreciate the lifestyle of the village.
The Wind Will Carry Us opened to wide acclaim from critics. Many hailed it as a masterpiece; the film further cemented Kiarostami's position as one of art-house circles' favorite directors of recent years. In a hugely positive review Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "This ambiguous comic masterpiece could be Abbas Kiarostami's greatest film to date; it's undoubtedly his richest and most challenging ... You have to become friends with this movie before it opens up, but then its bounty is endless." The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Sean Axmaker called it "a celebration of the human spirit nothing short of sublime." Michael Atkinson, after seeing the film in the first days of 2000, said, "[This is] the best film we'll see this year," and stood by his word. J. Hoberman wrote, "It's part of the movie's formal brilliance that, suddenly, during its final 10 minutes, too much seems to be happening. The Wind Will Carry Us is a film about nothing and everything—life, death, the quality of light on dusty hills." The film currently holds an 86/100 score on review aggregator Metacritic, and Rotten Tomatoes reports 96% approval.