BASHU, THE LITTLE STRANGER / THE STRANGER AND THE FOG

ABOUT THE FILMS: BASHU, THE LITTLE STRANGER, 1985, Dir. Bahram Beyzaie, 122 Mins, Film Movement, Iran In Gilaki, Arabic, and Persian with English subtitles. Voted “the greatest Iranian film of all time” by Persian film magazine Picture House, writer/director Bahram Beyzaie’s BASHU, THE LITTLE STRANGER is a deeply humanist and poetic tale of empathy and compassion. With studied realism and lyrical artistry, the film resonates as a prophetic parable of life during wartime. During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, a young boy named Bashu loses his family in a bombing raid on their home in Southern Iran. He escapes on a cargo truck headed to Northern Iran where he finds refuge with a farmer, Naii, and her two children. Despite the differences in their respective language and culture, the two form an indelible bond as they must face new challenges from Naii’s tight-knit community. FORMAT: DCP THE STRANGER AND THE FOG, 1974, Dir. Bahram Beyzaie, 146 Mins, Janus Films, Iran In Persian with English subtitles. Legendary Iranian New Wave director Bahram Beyzaie’s sophomore feature possesses both the epic dimensions of myth and the hallucinatory atmosphere of a dream. Set around the northern coast of Iran, THE STRANGER AND THE FOG begins with a boat drifting onto the shore of a small village. The beautiful Rana (Parvaneh Massoumi) hopes the stray vessel has brought back her husband, who disappeared a year ago out on the sea. But the only passenger is Ayat (Khosrow Shojazadeh), a wounded stranger with no memory of how he ended up in this land. After gradually proving himself as a member of the community, Ayat upsets the locals by marrying Rana, and then grows increasingly paranoid about intermittently glimpsed figures that vow to avenge his misdeeds from a forgotten past. Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Bahram Beyzaie. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. FORMAT: DCP