Wolf and Sheep

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Movie
German title Wolf and Sheep
Original title Wolf and Sheep
Country of production Denmark , France , Sweden , Afghanistan
original language Hazaragi
Publishing year 2016
length 86 minutes
Rod
Director Shahrbanoo Sadat
script Shahrbanoo Sadat
camera Virginie Surdej
cut Alexandra Strauss
occupation
In Afghanistan children are already learning to herd sheep and drive away wolves

Wolf and Sheep is a tragic comedy by Shahrbanoo Sadat that was shown for the first time on May 16, 2016 as part of the Quinzaine des réalisateurs series at the 2016 Cannes International Film Festival . As part of the Quinzaine des réalisateurs, the director received the Art Cinema Award there. The cinema release in Germany was on June 7, 2018.

action

The shepherd children in a remote region in Afghanistan know about the rule that boys and girls are not allowed to be together. The boys tie nooses and make slingshots with which they train to chase away wolves . The girls meanwhile secretly smoke stalks of wheat and imagine that they will soon find the man of their dreams and play Marriage. They secretly gossip about 11-year-old Sediqa because they think the outsider is cursed. The Qodrat, of the same age, is also the target of mockery when his mother is remarried to an old man who already has two wives after the death of his father. Therefore, Qodrat prefers to roam the most remote parts of the mountains alone. Sediqa looks after sheep and goats in the mountains , which she picks up in the village every morning and brings them back to their owners in the evening. The two outsiders soon get to know each other. Sediqa and Qodrat notice that it has been the same for them and become friends, even if they know that they should not be together. But one day Qodrat is sent away by his mother.

production

background

The director was the young Afghan Shahrbanoo Sadat , who also wrote the screenplay for the film. The film is inspired by Sadat's own youth, but is also based on the diary entries of her assistant director and production designer Anwar Hashimi. The filmmaker was born in Tehran in 1990 as the daughter of Afghan refugees . When she was 11, her family moved from the busy Iranian capital to a remote village in a rural area in central Afghanistan, where there was no electricity, no telephone, and no school for girls to attend. So every day Sadat walked to a school three hours away. The move from Tehran was a great culture shock for Sadat: “There was nothing there, just high mountains, dust and people I didn't know.” Because she didn't want to take off her glasses, which she had brought with her, the others got them ostracized and always felt like an outsider. Even in the village they had moved to, men and women cut themselves off from one another, as in the film. The women were in the house, cooking, cleaning, and drying dung , while the men outside were busy raising and slaughtering animals, making general decisions about what was right and wrong.

After seven years, Sadat left the village and moved to Kabul to finish school there. There she later attended a documentary film workshop at Ateliers Varan. It was here that she shot her first short film Vice Versa One , which she presented in 2011 at the Quinzaine des réalisateurs in Cannes . When Sadat was just 20 years old, she was selected by the Cannes' Cinéfondation Residence and learned the basics of filmmaking in Paris. It was there that she also began to watch sophisticated films, an opportunity she had never seen before. In 2013 Sadat founded the production company Wolf Pictures in Kabul and began producing her film Wolf and Sheep . Today Sadat commutes between Kabul and Copenhagen .

The film Wolf and Sheep was produced by the Danish film company Adomeit Film and co-produced by La Fabrica Nocturna Productions from France, Zentropa Sweden and the production company Wolf Pictures founded by Sadat. The total cost of producing the film was around $ 920,000. 413 individual donors who were won through a crowdsourcing campaign were involved in the financing of the film . The director does not describe Wolf and Sheep as a pure film drama: “Of course the film is meant to be humorous - the Afghan viewers in particular are amused, they recognize a lot. My only problem is that I can't even show the film in Afghanistan. "

Cast and filming

The leading roles of Sediqa and Qodrat were taken over by the young Afghan actors Sediqa Rasuli and Qodratolla Qadiri , for each of whom it was the first role in a feature film. The names of the characters they represent have been adapted to their actual first names. Sadat never gave the two of them a script, but explained the individual scenes to them about five minutes before they were recorded. In this way, says Sadat, the two actors were able to bring a lot of themselves into the role. Sadat only gave the rules that they shouldn't talk to her, say nothing that they shouldn't say in everyday life and not look into the camera.

The film was shot in a valley in Tajikistan , here in the city of Vrang near the Afghan border

For the filming, which took place in Tajikistan , 38 residents from rural Afghan regions were flown in to take on the other roles. Many of these had never left their village or Afghanistan before. These amateur actors are named Amina, Sahar, Masuma, Mohammad Amin, Zekria, Qorban Ali and Ali Khan. The shooting had taken place in Tajikistan, a country neighboring Afghanistan, the location where it was originally supposed to take place. However, because the security conditions in Afghanistan had worsened and many of the film crew were women, which was also a problem, a valley surrounded by mountains in Tajikistan, in the border region with Afghanistan, was chosen as the location instead. Sadat later said she had to use all her creativity to make this location look like Afghanistan. In addition to the actors, over 80 animals were involved in the production, including sheep, cows, donkeys and goats.

Costumes and equipment

The supporting actors wore their own colorful clothes in the film. A complete Afghan village was built on location and workers built stone houses similar to those in Afghanistan.

publication

The film was shown for the first time on May 16, 2016 as part of the Quinzaine des réalisateurs series at the Cannes International Film Festival . The film was presented at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on July 1, 2016 and at the Locarno International Film Festival on August 7, 2016 . From October 9, 2016, the film was shown at the London Film Festival . From November 9, 2016, the film was shown as part of the competition at the Braunschweig Film Festival . In November 2016 the film was presented at the International Film Festival of India . The film was released in French cinemas on November 30, 2016. In June 2017 the film was shown at the Sydney Film Festival . The film was released in German cinemas on June 7, 2018.

reception

Reviews

Alissa Simon of Variety says the film is pleasing to the eye despite the modest budget, and a strong sound design creates an ambience that also helps to feel very close to the action.

Thomas Sotinel from Le Monde says that Sadat, with great empathy and a keen eye, created a film about the reality of life in a country plagued by civil wars.

Georges Wyrsch from Swiss radio and television said that the film by the Afghan director was shown in the main program of the Cannes Film Festival was a novelty. Wyrsch says it is a fairytale-like, romantic and poetic film, whose rough dialogues caused laughter.

Julia Marx from the Tages-Anzeiger recognizes a believable liveliness in the film, which is due to the director's unclarified and very sober view of the archaic way of life, which makes Wolf and Sheep almost documentary, but also a poetic realism can be recognized in the film. Even if naked green fairies or upright wolves roamed surreally through the scenery in the film, the basic tone of the film remains naturalistic.

Gerhard Midding from epd Film explains that the director draws a picture of her homeland in the heart of Afghanistan that is captivatingly concrete: “A number of dialogues were improvised by the young actors and are sometimes full of lively obscenities. Her stories, on the other hand, not only revolve around the motif of transformation, but also always around that of punishment. The violence is part of everyday order of this world, never gives the Sharhbanoo Sadat seems an idyll. "

Awards (selection)

Cannes International Film Festival 2016 / Quinzaine des Réalisateurs 2016

Festival international du film de Femmes de Salé 2016

  • Awarded the special prize of the jury

Jerusalem Film Festival 2016

  • Nomination for the FIPRESCI Prize in the International First Film category (Shahrbanoo Sadat)

Sydney Film Festival 2017

  • Nomination for Best Film for the Sydney Film Prize (Shahrbanoo Sadat)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gerhard Midding: Review of 'Wolf and Sheep'. In: epd Film, May 25, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Katja Adomeit in conversation with Wendy Mitchell: Cannes: Shahrbanoo Sadat, Katja Adomeit talk 'Wolf And Sheep' In: screendaily.com, May 15, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b c d Alissa Simon: Cannes Film Review: 'Wolf and Sheep' In: Variety, May 20, 2016.
  4. ↑ Wolf and Sheep In: adomeitfilm.com. Retrieved September 1, 2016.
  5. ↑ Georges Wyrsch: 'Wolf and Sheep': Verbotene Liebesgrüß aus Afghanistan In: srf.ch, November 25, 2016.
  6. ↑ Isabel Stevens: Women's work: ten female filmmakers at Cannes 2016 In: bfi.org.uk, May 27, 2016.
  7. ↑ Wolf and Sheep In: filmfest-braunschweig.de. Retrieved November 8, 2016.
  8. ↑ Braunschweig Film Festival - the competition In: Braunschweiger Zeitung, November 4, 2016.
  9. ↑ Twelve Cannes award-winning films to be showcased in Goa In: indiatimes.com, November 8, 2016.
  10. ↑ Start dates Germany In: insidekino.com. Retrieved April 7, 2018.
  11. ↑ Thomas Sotinel: 'Wolf and Sheep': au cœur d'une communauté de bergers en Afghanistan In: Le Monde, May 18, 2016.
  12. ↑ Georges Wyrsch: 'Wolf and Sheep': Verbotene Liebesgrüß aus Afghanistan In: srf.ch, November 25, 2016.
  13. ↑ Julia Marx: believable liveliness. In the debut of the first Afghan female director, children tease each other no differently than in this country In: tagesanzeiger.ch, 23 November 2016.
  14. ↑ Liz Calvario: 'Wolf and Sheep' Beats' Neruda 'for Top Honors at Directors' Fortnight Awards at Cannes In: indiewire.com, May 20, 2016.
  15. ↑ Patrick Frater: Cannes: 'Wolf & Sheep' Rounds up Directors' Fortnight Prize In: Variety, May 20, 2016.
  16. ↑ 10e Festival international du film de femmes de Salé In: medias24.com, September 22, 2016.
  17. ↑ Festival Award Winners ( Memento of the original from June 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sff.org.au archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: sff.org.au. Retrieved May 25, 2017.