Blackboards - Trailer
Year:2000
Authorship: Alessandro Favaron
BLACKBOARDS is one of the long-feature films included in the Fabrica Cinema collection, the film production unit of Fabrica.
Directed by Samira Makhmalbaf (Iran)
Prizes. Cannes 2000 - Official Competition – Special Jury Award
Synopsis: As for her previous film, The Apple, Samira Makhmalbaf starts from a real news item: the incidents that occurred between the armies of the two countries and a group of young smugglers at the border that separates Iranian Kurdistan from the Iraqi one; incidents in which also a group of old Kurdish farmers were involved, who from their makeshift houses in Iran wanted to return to their villages beyond the frontier. What the young director wants to recount is not only the senselessness of a fratricidal conflict, but also the failure of the fundamentalist “enlightened” doctrine of the Islamic revolution. (The “Blackboards” are the teachers trying to reverse the illiteracy of the people in the rural mountain areas, with their blackboards on their shoulders). This is a film of epic proportions that provides a biting political analysis, using actors that are extraordinarily directed (Samira’s work with the old – the Kurdish farmers- and the young – the smugglers “pupils”- is demonstrated in a behind-the-scenes documentary created by Maysam Makhmalbaf).
Many of these films have won prestigious awards at the most renowned international film festivals, culminating in the 2002 Oscar for Best Foreign Film for No Man’s Land by Bosnian director Danis Tanovic
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