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

When your own, Western, cosseted and safe children start moaning about not having the latest 'must-have', play them this. They'll soon shut up, I promise!From the moment I first watched this enigmatically titled film on TV many years ago, I knew it was to become an absolute favourite of mine. Now, at last, I've got it on DVD and can watch it again (& again).There's something very resolutely matter-of-fact in these people's harshness and the extents to which they have to go to address them. It seems ironic - and a bit ridiculous here in the West, where we like a a drink or two, that liquor is not drunk by people, but force fed to the pack mules and horses to numb them enough to make dangerous black-market trips over the snowbound mountain and into Iraq.The main characters are the children, totally without whimsy or sentiment that simply try and make do without parents. That this includes a severely handicapped boy who not only needs daily medication but an operation to prolong his life - and their inventive means to try and fund that is bound to fire our emotions and one admires with both pride and pity.This is definitely one of those very rare (& indeed, it is rare, i.e difficult to see/get hold of) that WILL affect you and probably far more than you'd dare realise. Ten out of 10.

The documentary style of this movie doesn't put us away from the drama of life in this Kurdish village in Iranian soil but on the border with Irak. People there make a living by smuggling goods over the border subject to the constant risk of mines and ambushes. This involves children as well as adults. Life is particularly hard for children who have also to work for a living either wrapping up objects in the towns or carrying heavy packages on their shoulder or conducting mules carrying them across the border in the middle of the harshest weather conditions and a hostile landscape, to be sold on the other side. This is also the story of a family of orphan children, one of them being a crippled boy whose siblings treat with extreme care and tenderness, trying to earn money enough to take him to Irak to be operated otherwise he'll die soon. The image style is simple and unadorned. The images speak indeed for themselves. This story tells us not only how people live in that region of the globe, showing their customs and culture, but also how poverty and hardness cannot untie there the bonds of love in the bosom of the family. Maybe something we could learn in our western societies.

This film is a masterpiece in Iranian cinema. Its rare for other films to convey as much emotion as this one did, yet maintaining a very dramatic and professional vibe. Ghobadi's work as an assistant truly paid off and this film is undoubtebly in my top 10 Iranian films of all time. a masterpiece.