Tinar Mehdi Moniri

A boy is softly singing. Meanwhile he is cuddling a calf, kissing it affectionately on the cheek and plucking its eyebrows. It’s a sunny spring day, somewhere on a hillside in Darmavand, Iran. Mehdi Moniri has made a beautiful portrait of Ghasem, a young cowherd who spends most of his time with the company of just a few animals.

During the sunny days Ghasem runs over the mountains, the sun playing off the backs of the animals he herds. He fights and plays with them like with his brothers, who he sees very rarely. His father has remarried after his mother’s death and lives with his new family further down the mountain, keeping Ghasem on the mountain with the animals, like an unwanted souvenir from a former life.

When summer becomes fall, his contact with the outside world lessens like the fading of the warmth. He sings for the comfort of his own voice and screams at the elements from the top of his lungs. “Why are you so tough to cut?” he asks a tree he needs for fire in winter, while he tries to saw it with a cold ridden face. Finally out of the snow and warming his hands, he whispers that he would like to have a mother, who takes care of him.

The filmmaker must have stayed really close to Ghasem, to be able to show his life so closely over such a long period of time. In a way it is comforting to know that the boy hasn’t spent the harsh winter totally alone. Loneliness is ever present through the surroundings he constantly has to fight, like the miles he walks with a small horse, to transport one container of milk over the snowy mountains. The film is very physical, with every flexing muscle, ripped nail and blister captured like glistening raindrops or rays of sun shining through a broken roof.

Tinar is a film that you can’t say anything negative about. Maybe that’s its only flaw, that it is too perfect to make a lasting impression.

Maartje Alders