Goodbye Life

Colour, 35 mm
Iran, 2006, 93 min
IP – International premiere
Section: Official Selection - Competition

Synopsis

A film which describes the terrors of war as seen through the eyes of a fragile reporter who manages to overcome her thoughts of suicide on the battle field. This drama, conceived as harsh “psychotherapy”, tells of the beautiful Maryam who, after her unsuccessful marriage, thinks of committing suicide in a way which would at least be of some use to others. She thus enters the Iran-Iraq war as a reporter. Her time spent in the devastated desert landscape, armies spilling over from one side to the other depending on which has the upper hand, totally changes her vision of the world. She is surrounded by suffering and pain, even in the village where she goes to find shelter after her unit is massacred. A wedding in the village ends in tragedy. The close of the film again finds Maryam at the front, where she comes across her friend, the commander Beshar.

About the director

Ensieh Shah-Hosseini (b. 1954, Gorgan, Iran) made her second feature film, about a woman who chooses life instead of death, on the basis of her own experiences as a reporter during the Iran-Iraq war. Her memories of the years 1980–1988 materialise in Goodbye Life in naturalistic shots of vast numbers of dead bodies and also via “billboard” shots of a wide open space covered with military helmets; these reminiscences were also the basis for the documentary War Refugees. Ensieh Shah-Hosseini is also a writer, screenwriter and documentarist: her short film Deadline from 2000 won the top award at the Women’s Film Festival in Seoul a year later. She made her feature debut Goodbye Life in 2006.