If movies about slapping inebriated mules is something that gets you off, then have I got a film for you.  I don’t think the drunk-mule-abusing demographic is too hot on films from Iran, which is a shame because A Time for Drunken Horses is really a great film.

Horses is set in an Iranian village near the Iraqi border.  Because of the ongoing conflicts between the two countries, the snowy area is littered with landmines, making passage extremely difficult.  This is bad news for the Iranians who make their living smuggling goods to Iraq via pack mule.  These smugglers give their mule alcohol, based on how low the temperature is supposed to be.

Horses focuses on a family of five orphaned Kurdish children who have lost their mother during childbirth and their father in a landmine explosion.  The oldest children, Ayoub (Ayoub Ahmadi) and Rojin (Rojin Younessi), have quickly assumed the roles of mother and father and feverishly try to keep the younger kids healthy and happy.  They do a good job, but 15-year-old Madi (Madi Ekhtiar-dini) is crippled and requires pills and injections on a regular basis.  Madi also needs an operation or he’ll die.

Horses is partially narrated by Madi’s younger sister, Amaneh (Amaneh Ekhtiar-dini), who helps out however she can – whether it's wrapping glasses in newspaper for strangers or helping brother Ayoub load their mule with supplies to smuggle over the border.  The film has a great opening scene, where Amaneh is asked a series of questions that help to develop all of Horses’ characters.

The film follows the struggles of the family to keep Madi in good spirits while they try to find money for his surgery.  The children in the film, who are all non-professional actors from the village Horses was filmed in, all do an amazing job at making your heart break when you watch their futile efforts bear little fruit.  Horses goes out of its way to show that people and horses are in pretty much the same boat. Actually, the horses get liquor, so they actually might be better off.

Horses is the directorial debut of Bahman Ghobadi, and the film won him the Golden Camera Award (for best first feature) at the Cannes Film Festival.  Those of you familiar with Iranian cinema may recognize Ghobadi as the ditch-digger (and second unit director) in Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us.  Those of you really familiar with Iranian cinema won’t recognize him because the ditch-digger was never actually seen in The Wind.

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