Iran in Focus: 'A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night' (2014)

(Written as part of an imaginary Iranian Film Festival Programme, Spring 2016)

(A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night)

Premiering at the Sundance film festival in 2014, director Ana Lily Amapour’s incredibly impressive feature film debut generated a rapturous reception that reverberated around audiences and critics a-like for many months afterwards. If anything, this is a film that stands as a shining example of a powerful breadth of talent growing and blossoming from Iran, a talent we hope to be recognised.

This subversive vampire western is set in a fictional city called ‘Bad City’ which through the films crisp black and white look and endless cultural references to a time long before, gives this weird world a sense of eerie, vintage timelessness. Arash (Arash Marandi), the Iranian James Dean in this funky world, is the films main point of view. His father (Marshell Manesh), a junkie and one of many social outcasts that populate Bad City, owes money to a local pimp (Dominic Rains) who takes Arash’s ‘50’s style vintage car as payment. When visiting the pimp, Arash meets the mysterious and foreboding figure that is the titular character (Sheila Vand), and is only the beginning of many instances where this bloodthirsty symbol of female power takes back the night one corpse at a time.

(A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night)

As mentioned before, Amapour wears her influences on her sleeve. The film feels like David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), and looks like his Eraserhead (1977), and if interested by this film, you will most certainly be interested by the weird and fantastic films of David Lynch. As well as this there are obvious nods to Tarantino’s pop culture filled films, Pulp Fiction (1994) in particular, and to the silent horror classic Nosferatu (1922).

Another thing has to be said of the films instantly iconic soundtrack, a crazily exquisite blend of 80’s pop and Iranian psychedelic rock. The result, the director also being a musician and DJ, is an incredibly erotic, uneasy, and thumping soundtrack creating a thoroughly pleasurable experience both watching and listening to the film. All this cinematic cool gives Amapour’s debut a rebellious, indie, teenage essence.

Amapour is an exciting young female filmmaker in Hollywood, which during the current climate of gender inequality in Hollywood, serves as a symbol of inspiration to female filmmakers and young women attending IFFN this year. In our minds, we could not have picked a more appropriately powerful film to open this year’s festival

Before we show the film we have special guest Mark Kermode coming in to give an introductory talk about IFFN, and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night which he describes as a “weirdly exhilarating feature debut” and lauds it as a “bloody triumph”. A powerful presence in British criticism over the last 25 years, Kermode has worked extensively with the BBC, written three books, and is chief film critic for The Observer.