The People of the Wind…

Since I live in the Persian Gulf in the Sultanate of Oman, I have become more familiar with the “zar” — a communal ceremony intended to drive out unwelcome spirits and restore an individual to health in mind, body, and spirit (I have also attended zars in Africa as well). As I publish on Iranian film and have been studying the zar ceremony in East Africa and the Persian Gulf, I was delighted to learn of a new Iranian film, The People of the Wind, which is about the performance of “zar” in Hormuzgan Province on the coast of the Persian Gulf in southern Iran. The film was directed by Abtin Sarabi, a young Iranian director who lives and works in Lille, France and Tehran. He graduated from the Toulouse School of Fine Arts and is influenced by Iranian film master Abbas Kiarostami and the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky.