Mourning

A frame filled with darkness. In the distance we hear the muffled voices of a man and woman arguing violently over whether to leave their ountryside retreat to return to Tehran. As dawn breaks, light slowly fills the screen, revealing a young boy lying alone in bed, the look on his face betraying that this is not the first time he has overheard such a scene.

So begins Morteza Farshbaf’s debut feature film Mourning. A protegé of Abbas Kiarostami – he has directed short films under the tutelage of the Iranian master – Farshbaf proves himself wonderfully adept at cinematic sleights of hand. Soon after being introduced to the young boy, we discover that the couple fighting were in fact his parents. We next see him in the back of the car of the deaf relatives with whom the trio were staying. The man and woman communicate in sign language, offering the viewer tantalising snippets of information: there has been an accident; lives have been lost. Why would their guests leave in the middle of the night, and why would they leave their son behind? From here, Farshbaf fashions a consistently surprising and blackly comic road trip that may herald the arrival of a major new Iranian talent.