Media luna

This movie is poetry in action. It has elements of the humorous, dark, ridiculous, sublime, mysterious, evocative all rolled in. The actual events shown somehow faded from the overall sense of poetic experience at the end of the movie. The music ranges from tragic to enchanting and it's a primary component of the movie. It is shown to have powers to bring back the dead. The landscapes shown are also stunning and stark. Its almost like the natural environment is designed for expression of grief – which reflects the political situation in the region. The final product is powerful. I would like to watch more from this Director – he definitely has a keen eye for the subtle. He has intelligently showcased optimism for life with its incumbent struggles and sometimes futility.

Half Moon: (original Kurdish title, Niwe Mang): director, Bahman Ghobadi. Viewed at San Sebastian film festival, 2006.

Thursday, day number eight of the festival, was packed from stem to stern with significant film viewings, three major press conferences, and meetings with colleagues, leaving little time to write about these events in any detail. The day started with the press screening in the main hall of the Kursaal Center of Bahman Ghobadi's new Iranian-Kurdish offering, "Half Moon" (Niwemang). Ghobadi is a favored son here in Donostia where his last film "Turtles Can Fly" copped a unanimous decision for the Best Film Golden Concha two years ago.

The current work, with a lengthy running time of just under two hours, again focuses on the stateless Kurdish community of Iran, and is rich in Kurdish cultural and folkloric material with the usual sparkling, natural performances he invariably draws from his predominantly Kurdish performers, and the huge panoramic landscapes of the barren mountainous Persian terrain which have come to typify his visual style.

"Half Moon" might be characterized as a road movie in which a group of traditional Kurdish musicians consisting of Maestro Mamo and his ten sons, set out in a school bus from Tehran for the border area where Iran abuts against both Turkey and Iraq, hoping to stage a musical event with traditional instruments for their Kurdish bretheren in Iraq — now a possibility thanks to the recent fall of the Saddam Hussein regime.

At the border they run into unpleasant military confrontations with near disastrous results for their treasured project. Mamo, (Ismail Ghaffari) the handsome old man who is the leader of the delegation, is so distraught that he gets into the coffin where the Kurdish instruments have been concealed and asks to be buried alive. At the touchy border crossing they are met by a beautiful mysterious young woman who offers her assistance in getting them past the ominous border guards.

"Half Moon", while dealing with the precarious position of Kurds in this strife torn part of the world, is much lighter in tone than hisu previous "Turtles Can Fly" and is almost a comedy, but with serious political overtones. The beauty at the border is played by Golshifte Farahani, currently Iran's most popular leading lady of the silver screen. With her looks and on screen charisma its not hard to see why.

PHOTO: Golshifte Farahani She reminds me of a cross between Italy's Monica Belluci and Pakistan's former president Benazir Bhutto. With Iran's growing presence on the world film scene I would be willing to bet my bottom Euro that it's only a matter of time before this striking actress is discovered by some Western director and breaks out into an international career. She was present at the press conference and speaks English, so that language would be no hindrance.

At the press conference following the screening director Ghobadi was very relaxed, often smiling, and, though speaking in Farsi through an interpreter, looked every questioner straight in the eye while his interpreter translated into Spanish. This was a tri-lingual press conference as some questions had to wind their way from English through Spanish, then into Farsi — and back again by the same route. Fun! An important question, put to Ghobadi by Steve Ashton of the Napa Valley Wine Country festival in California, was whether or not the film was censored or hampered in any way in Iran. Ghobadi replied that first of all, he received no internal support to make the film in Iran and therefore had to import equipment from Europe (this was an Iran-Iraq-Austra-France co-production) and, when finished, it was banned from screens in Iran. The DOP, incidentally, was a New Zealander, Nigel Bluck. This is the director's fourth feature since his highly acclaimed debut "A Time For Drunken Horses" in 2000. All have been shown at important festivals, Mar del Plata, Cannes, and the last two here in Donostia.

At 37 Bahman Ghobadi would appear to have a long road ahead of himself and is clearly a name to remember.

in this movie the story is telling the what was happened in the east of turkey, ıraq , and persia, there are a lot of kurdish people and in ıraq saddam was executed a lot of kurdish people just they talking their language . thus many of them are move to the Iran,turkey and others. so that this story is told a man whose last wish is to sing a song in the land that he was born. but it is not that easy to went there . still in this days in turkey and Iran it is forbidden to talk kurdish. so that there are many people who really want to live their culture freely. if you don't understand or feel this feeling this movie will just be an ordinary movie. but if you feel that feeling you can see that how the director made a great project

Reviewed at its 3rd & final screening Sat. Sept 16, 2006 at the Varsity 3 cinema during the Toronto International Film Festival. The film had world premiered earlier during the fest on Sept 9 at the Isabel Bader Theatre.

This road movie with touches of dark comedy was a pleasure to see and touched the heart many times. It is story of a "Kurdish Mozart" (as imagined by the director - a fictional living legend Kurdish composer/musician with a whole orchestra of sons and daughters) and his struggle to get to a major music festival in Iraqi Kurdistan from Irani Kurdistan. It was fascinating and life-affirming.

Even as the film had several moments of desperation and despair on the way the whole thing was lightened by touches like a comedic bus driver, various moments of interaction between the father and his sometimes reluctant or rebellious sons and the resilience of a young woman named Papooli (Butterfly) who was born with the name Niwe mung (Half Moon).

Director Bahman Ghobadi was an enthusiastic show-up for the 3rd screening and gave many interesting tidbits during his Q&A such as info on the banning of female singing and musicians in present day Iran for the past 28 years, that his self-censorship on the film did not help it to get past Irani censors so that he may re-cut the film for the later general international release now anyway (restoring more scenes of female singing & playing) and that the whole 7 months of seeking for travel permits subplot in this film was a nod to the struggles he had to get his earlier "Turtles Can Fly" film made.

This film was 1 of 7 in TIFF 2006's Mozart - A New Crowned Hope series which is a sneak peek at the series before it screens at the Vienna Mozart Year Festival in December 2006.

Highly recommended and a worthy successor to the director's previous films.

Half Moon begins amidst a frenetic atmosphere as a pair of fighting cocks scrap in a room packed full of jostling, shouting men. But from this boisterous opening there emerges a slow-paced road movie in which a group of Kurdish musicians undertake a bus journey to perform at a concert in Iraqi Kurdistan. Their trek takes us through some stunningly bleak scenery, from dull-brown dusty plains to snow-capped peaks and towns clinging to mountainsides.

The most striking scene in the film features a town full of hundreds of exiled female singers, who line the street and tops of buildings as the travelling musicians retrieve a fellow performer for the concert. The absurdity of this acts as a clever commentary on the banning of female musicians in Islamic Iran and there are countless further insights into the lives of Kurdish people throughout Half Moon. The nerve-wracking confrontations with border guards testify to the great difficulties faced by the Kurds in being divided across four countries and treated frequently as second-class citizens. Somewhat strangely for a film about travelling musicians the film does not afford a great deal of attention to the music of the people whom it portrays, but there are nevertheless some very interesting sounds to be heard here.

Engaging with the storyline can be difficult at times due the contrasting moods and a tendency to jump back and forth in time. Although not often laugh-out-loud in nature, there are many moments of warm-hearted humour during the film. On the other hand, dark omens abound throughout and create a growing sense of foreboding. The combination of these elements seems incongruous on occasion but they are drawn together in a moving climax. I found parts of the film falling into place long after I left my seat in the cinema and I regard that as a rare and valuable thing.