A Horse Has More Blood Than a Human

A couple of elderly people shake up their lives and leave Tehran to return to their hometown on the Turkish border. In doing so, it is citizens’ accounts of the geopolitical situation of the territory that strikes them more than the change of place. The town has become a clandestine gateway into Europe and is home to numerous dramas. Building on this observation, Abolfazl Talooni begins a double process. Focused on the couple, the director films with simplicity moments of reunion and celebration in which a certain joy is still palpable. In the background, he strives to sound out the ambiguity of a population forced to participate in this traffic. Measuring up to the complexity of the subject, he tries his utmost to show a multiplicity of points of view rather than drawing an unilateral response. In the face of this deadlock, Talooni finds safe images in the immaculate beauty of the landscapes. Populated with soldiers and cattle, as if it were caught in a vice, nature sees its fate frozen for an unknown amount of time.

Tom Bidou