Marooned in Iraq

This has been retitled for its UK release, in what seems an opportunistic attempt to latch on to the current (2002/3) crisis. The original - Songs of My Homeland - is both atmospherically and thematically more descriptive. Set during the Iran-Iraq war, the story (from the maker of A Time for Drunken Horses) concerns an Iranian Kurdish musician searching for his singer wife, who left him for his best friend over the Iraqi border. An uneven mix of physical comedy, mountainous off-road movie and satire on the types that gather around conflict, it certainly challenges our expectations of Iranian cinema. Whether it finally works is another matter altogether.