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Stray Dogs (Sag-haye Velgard) (2006) Directed by: Marzieh Meshkini Date of birth: 1969, Tehran, Iran Writing credits: Marzieh Meshkini Music: Mohammad Reza Darvishi Country: Iran Language: Farsi Color: Color Runtime: 93 minutes Released: 2006 Genre: Drama |
Synopsis Seeking shelter in a burnt-out madrasa, the near-starving children learn that
their father’s friends have been taken to American prisons at Guantanamo Bay.
Near a town dump bonfire, they find an abandoned Volkswagen Beetle fitted out
with a TV where they uncomprehendingly glimpse footage of the second plane
hitting the World Trade Center. The owner of this technological setup stands in
the rubble, shaking his fist at an airplane passing far overhead, shouting,
“Come down! The toilet is right here! You threw bombs and killed my wife! Come
down and I”ll wash your ass with water!”
While picking through rags
and refuse in a wintry Kabul, a little girl rescues a button-eyed white puppy
trapped in a smoking hellhole, where tormenting urchins wave a fiery circle of
flaming torches above as they displace their accumulated aggressions on the
sooty pup (“The dog’s looking for the Taliban!,” “She belongs to the Russians!.”
“She was with the Americans! They killed our fathers!”). The girl and her
brother carry the grateful animal to the women’s prison to spend a freezing
night with their incarcerated mother, burning books on the stone floor to stave
off frostbite. In this Afghanistan brutalized by oppressive religion, medieval
morality, and western militarism, where humanity has been exfoliated down to its
final layer, they are condemned to scramble for survival.
Facing possible execution, their mother sends them to the
men’s prison to beg her forgiveness from their Taliban father. Her crime? Five
years after he disappeared during the war, she married another man, now also
dead. “What will we do if they kill Mom?” ask the frightened children. The
father replies, “I went to war for God’s sake but your mother married. Good, now
they can make love to each other in hell.” But here even the dead cannot be
buried unless the gravediggers spread flames to heat the earth so that the
pickaxe can get through the frozen gravel. 
Starring: Gol-Ghotai, Zahed, Agheleh
Rezaie, Sohrab Akbari, Jamil Ghanazideh, Agheleh Shamsollah, Razeddin Sayyar,
Maydeh Gol, Ghomri Amir, Shah Golbahari
Watch Stray
Dogs (2006)
More films created by Marzieh Meshkini
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