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The Review - AT THE MOVIES with WILLIAM HALL
Published: 3 January 2008

Kurdish musicians confront the military in Iraq

Stateless Kurds and a talent for dark comic poetry

HALF MOON
Directed by Bahman Ghobadi
Certificate tbc

THE most unusual offering of the week has to be this reminder that the Kurds have their own film-makers too.
It has been said that director Bahman Ghobadi “has a knack for turning statelessness into dark comic poetry”, and this one seems to confirm it.
The central character is an elderly musician (Ismail Ghaffari) who calls in his 10 sons to help him in a farewell concert in Iraq – the first by Kurdish musicians since the fall of Saddam.
Perhaps they should have disguised themselves as a football team.
Their struggle to reach the venue in time opens a rich vein as events conspire to thwart them.
They run into a US firefight at the border.
Then lose their female vocalist when their bus finds itself in a village of 1,300 exiled women singers who stand on rooftops and serenade the musicians in one of the most visually exciting set- pieces.
You can catch it at the ICA cinema in the Mall if you are so minded.

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