Directed by Babak Jalali
Iran’s northern border ranges from mountains to plains to the Caspian Sea; Persians, Turkmen, and Kazakhs share the landscape. Filmmaker Babak Jalali presents an assortment of hometown stories that evoke the potential and diversity of this unfulfilled gateway between Europe and Asia. Alam is in love with a girl he has never spoken to; Kazem owns a clothing store but can’t seem to stock anything that fits; and Hassan, at age 30, counts a pet donkey and a tape player as his only companions. Meanwhile, a minstrel who claims his wife was stolen by someone in a green Mercedes years ago is chronicled by a Tehran photographer. With a cinematic style that is a study in elegant simplicity, Frontier Blues is a sweet, slightly absurdist snapshot of desperate men, absent women, and waiting for whatever the future may hold.
2009. Iran/Great Britain/Italy. 95 min.
SCREENING WITH
The Bizarre Friends of Ricardinho – Directed by Augusto Canani
A weird trainee. A stifling job. In the midst of corporate oppression, a worker passively fights back with stories from home. 2009. Brazil. 20 min.
Fri Apr 2: 6:15 (MoMA)
Sun Apr 4: 5:30 (FSLC)
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
Babak Jalali (b. 1978, Northern Iran) has lived mainly in London since 1986. He received a BA in Balkan/East European Studies and an MA in politics from the University of London, and an MA in filmmaking from the London Film School in 2005. His graduation film, Heydar. An Afghan in Tehran, screened at 60 film festivals worldwide and received a BAFTA Best Short Film nomination in 2006. He developed his first feature, Frontier Blues, during his Cannes Film Festival Cinéfondation residence (2006–07), and shot the film in and around his hometown of Gorgan on Iran’s northern frontier with Turkmenistan.
