Ma'bar
Payam Parsafar
Iran | 2017 | 16 min
World premiere
Language : Farsi
Subtitles : English, French
Shalamcheh is a small town located in the Khuzestan Province. Situated on the border with Iraq, north-west of the city of Abadan, which is only 53 kilometres distant from the Persian Gulf and near the Iraqi-Iran border, Shalamcheh was one of the main Iraqi troop sites at the time of the war against Iran. Approximately 50,000 Iranians died fighting around the town. Today Shalamcheh is a gateway for pilgrims headed to Karbala, a city located in central Iraq, south-west of Baghdad. Considered a holy city by Shia Muslims, home to the Imam Hussain Shrine, tens of millions of pilgrims visit Karbala twice a year. Payam Parsafar’s camera films the flow of people crossing over the borders with an astonished sense of emotion. The ghosts of those fallen in the war overlap like a crossfade with the bodies of those headed to the holy site. A striking symphony of haunting images where borders are the mournful reminder of the unacceptable madness of all wars, while the land itself, once green and plenteous still, seems to weep and hurt.
Giona A. Nazzaro
