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Iran · 2000
1h 20m
Director Bahman Ghobadi
Starring Ayoub Ahmadi, Rojin Younessi, Amaneh Ekhtiar-dini, Madi Ekhtiar-dini
Genre Drama, War
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After their father dies, a family of five are forced to survive on their own in a Kurdish village on the border of Iran and Iraq. Matters are made worse when 12 year old Ayoub, the new head of the family, is told that his handicapped brother, Madi, needs an immediate operation in order to remain alive. This heartbreaking tale shows the lengths to which a family will go in order to survive in the harshest of conditions.
Ghobadi works squarely in the neorealist tradition of countrymen like former mentor Abbas Kiarostami, using nonprofessional actors and documentary technique to tell small, spare stories of the human condition through the eyes of children.
It's difficult to imagine a more eloquent tribute.
Baltimore Sun by Chris Kaltenbach
The real hero here is Ghobadi, whose love and respect for the culture in which he was raised shines through every frame.
A wrenching film.
Deeper and richer in humanity than all but a handful of the American films released this year.
New York Post by Jonathan Foreman
Ghobadi (himself an Iranian Kurd) takes some gorgeous shots against the snow, but his storytelling is uneven and often slow.
Chicago Tribune by Michael Wilmington
Showing us a world through a child's eyes, A Time for Drunken Horses speaks so truthfully and well that it breaks the heart and scars the conscience.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Paula Nechak
In its austere visual understatement rests a ton of emotional power.
It simultaneously wows you with the stark beauty of its images, a beauty that leads to another, related kind of truth that is equally crucial. It's not to be missed.
San Francisco Examiner by Wesley Morris
The welcome hints at emotional excess are compromised by the blunt force of the movie's political point-making.
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