Wow! Such a good movie.

Touches You

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

This is a Kurdish film. That does not just mean that it is a film in the Kurdish language or one set in Kurdistan, it also means that it is Kurdish by genre. Children or orphans, child labor, war or the result of a war, missing or sick persons, remote area, difficult terrain, smuggling, poverty... If you think you've seen this before, you probably have, in another film.This is not the fault of this film, as it is one of the earliest ones, but when everyone (including this director) started reusing these themes, this film didn't age well. There are just too many films about the same topics, ones that don't go too deep into the issues beyond presenting them to the audience.This film is a snapshot in the life of some children who try to save their sick sibling.The children have to become adults much earlier than they should, needing to quit school, be responsible, get married or work at an age when they should be children. This film is shot in a cinéma verité style, almost like a Handicam documentary and you really feel like you are there.Some have commented on the acting, feeling that it is unprofessional, while others said that it was very convincing because the actors weren't really acting. I'm siding with the latter, even though I think both sides are describing the same thing. Some people expect to see acting and are unconvinced by people being or playing themselves. I have several problems with this film. For one, as a story, it lacks an ending. It's not ambiguous, it's just abrupt. The film doesn't end, it just stops.Secondly, this film also doesn't go deeper into the issues. It presents them as a list of problems Kurds have to endure, but it just goes from one item to the next, offering no cause, commentary or solution.For example, the director, Ghobadi, could've shown how circle is perpetuated. Children have to choose between working to survive or going to school. This leaves the population uneducated, able only to do menial work, live in poverty and struggle to take care of their own children, who themselves have to choose between working to help their parents and siblings or go to school.The director could've shown another angle, how war, poverty and lack of health care have changed the shape of the family in some parts of Kurdistan where the new nuclear family is the siblings alone taking care of each other.He could've shown us how the suffering of these children is the fault of their parents who decided to have these children at a terrible time, after the destructive Iran-Iraq war and during the first Gulf War. These children were born as Kurds at a time when Iran and Iraq hated each other, with Kurds in the middle and everyone under embargo.Ghobadi could've shown us the cause, shown us how this is perpetuated or shown us a solution or a glimmer of hope.You begin to ask questions. Why did the father not marry again to have a stepmother for these children? After decades of war and genocide, the population of Kurdistan is unbalanced, with so many widows and unmarried women. Marriage in such difficult times is not about love, weddings or childbearing, but about economics and survival. This man could not find one widow to help raise his children? That is hard to believe.In real life, broken systems bring broken and imperfect solutions. The broken solution to child poverty is child labor. The solution to lack of jobs is the grey/black markets. The solution to losing a wife is to find one's children a stepmother. The director has deliberately cut out that option to give us a story that is sadder. Between realism and sadness, the director opted for the latter. The solution to childlessness is adoption. But that is cut out too.These are failings in this film. The director chose to give us something that would sell better because it's sadder rather than something more realistic.Finally, even as I give this film 7/10, I wonder what the point of this film is. As a movie, it's not that entertaining. As a documentary-like film, it's not that realistic, aiming clearly to deliver the saddest story possible, almost following a checklist (orphan siblings of a sick child have to engage in child labor and sell their sister as a child bride to pay for their brother's life-saving surgery. Is that not contrived?). It's not a documentary, so it does not propose solutions, give us causes or a deeper look. So what does this film do? It is, in a way, misery snuff, meant to elicit a sad response from the viewer. It does that job well with incredible focus, but at the cost of overall film quality.There is little focus on Kurdish culture, while Kurdish music, perhaps the most important thing in Kurdish society, plays almost no part. This is due to the filming style - adding a cinematic score would've clashed with the look the director was aiming for.I called this film the quintessential Kurdish film because more and more films follow this template -  produced in 2000, Kurdish cinema has still not advanced one inch. We get to choose between tragedies and fairy tales. This one is a tragedy, Bekas a fairy tale. My criticism is harsh for a film I give 7, because it has to be. Giving this film 10/10 does no one any favor.Positives: acting, cinematography, realism (somewhat), casting, location Negatives: lack of story, ending, depth, message; lack of music/score.

A beautiful film. The first time director won an award at Canne for his effort -- the judges were quite impressed. So am I. It shows an interesting slice of life on the Iranian border with Iraq in the Kurdistan region. The actors are amateurs who are able to give the most warm and genuine performances as the characters in this situation. There's no message to take away that war is wrong or anything like that. It's just a slice of life. There actually isn't much of a message other than you gotta do for your family what you gotta do. It's truly eye-opening the lengths that people will go to in order to simply survive. We complain about the most idiotic things in our world with Coca Cola and college and pot and beer and gas stations and pizza delivery and ipods and laptops and torrenting. We are schmucks. Look at these people and feel blessed. Maybe look at these people and wonder how you might be able to help. There might not be a lot that one can do, but there's got to be something. If not then just be aware. This movie can at least do that, show us how life is somewhere we may never go or ever even find out about.8.6 / 10 stars--Zoooma, a Kat Pirate Screener

Notably this movie won many awards in the film festivals around the globe. Hard to say it is the director's debuntante product. A tale about the young siblings leading their hard lives where there is no one to look after. The family without the elders guidance trying to fit in the tough society. Theirs earning depending on the illegal business where child labouring is so common, especially in their village. At the early age these kids are behaving equally to the adults like a fully developed mentality. The fight for the normal life in the surround of harsh mother nature where it covered with snows. Kinda rare to see a story that takes place in this part of the earth because most of us believed middle east is a hot desert region.'A Time for Drunken Horses' tells the story of an Iranian Kurdish family who live in the village next to Iraq border. Their lives running on the smuggling business by their father. Once he dies 12 year old Ayoub is forced to take over his father's position in order to feed the family. The family is yet to recover from their recent loss but situation worsens when the doctor says their handicapped brother needs an immediate operation. Auoub begins to work hard to earn enough toman but in the end he falls short and then his sister come to help. How this struggling family without the parents and with a inexperienced leader leads to the right direction is the rest of the story.The director Ghobadi used the non professional child actors in this 80 minute short tale. Where he succeeds to deliver the surreal drama of his country's domestic problems faced by the poor families. The title represents the horses that used for the smuggling. In some part of the story where they feed alcohol for the horses and especially in the end scene it was unbearable to see animal cruelty. It looked surreal and made uncomfortable to watch. On the other side the young boy's battle for his brother's life was endurable. In the end the movie will easily win your heart.

With their mother long dead, twelve-year old Ayoub becomes the head of the family over his four brothers and sisters. Taking up the dangerous smuggling runs of his father, Ayoub is put in an even more difficult situation when he learns that his youngest brother, the severely handicapped Madi is getting steadily worse and will need an operation to live any longer than the next few months. With the dangers involved, Ayoub sets out to make the journey and the money to get Mani the operation he needs.I had never heard of this film before I watched it, nor had I heard anything about it – I just was interested to see an Iranian film (my first I think). Despite having now read the many comments on this site about the film, I must confess that I was not as taken by it as everyone else seems to have been. What it does well is to present us with quite a convincing view of the general hardships and lifestyles of those living in this area and, as such it is pretty interesting. However when you take a look at the plot, it doesn't actually fit with the film's aim of realism. Firstly not a great deal happens and the film is not as consistently involving as it really should have been – even as a documentary style film it has several points where it drags quite heavily. The actual subject of the film rather undermines the reality of the situation, even if it is used to emotionally involve the audience easier than a straight documentary may have done.What I mean by this is the plot device of Madi – in the Western world I can accept a story where others will really put themselves out for others fianically; however in this situation I found it to be unconvincing that Ayoub would risk the immediate future of the rest of his family for the sake of Madi who, lets be honest, was never going to live for very long even with the operation. If he was my brother I would do anything, but I didn't buy that they would be able to spend the money knowing that they would save Madi but maybe condemn the whole lot of them to starvation etc. It did make me more emotionally involved in the film but I have to wonder how much more involving it would have been if Madi's suffering would have been just yet another unchangeable part of this family's situation.The cast are pretty good considering the fact that none of them are actors and, in contrast to many Western movies, it is the children who are vastly superior to the adults. While many of the grownups seem uncomfortable in front of the camera and only act natural when in crowds, the children are best in the smaller moments. In particular Ahmadi's Ayoub is a very sympathetic character and is a good way to get into the story; likewise it is very difficult not to get emotionally involved when you see Ekhtiar-dini crying and crying over just one of his daily injections. However out of the rest of the cast there isn't enough material to go around and too few of the ensemble cast have much to do but hang around and look deprived! The direction is great and manages to blend the beauty of the scenery with the desolation of the lives to good effect – that sounds a bit pompous but I can't describe it any other way!This is a slow film that doesn't have the plot that it deserved and it may alienate the casual viewer but it is still worth the effort. The acting of the main children is very convincing, the direction captures the beauty of Iran as well as the sheer grind of the characters' lives and the film is mostly interesting. Only weaknesses in plotting stop it from being better.