Blackboards (2000)

Recommended
Iran/Italy/Japan
Feature Film
Original Title: تخته سیاه
Director: Samira Makhmalbaf
Writers: Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samira Makhmalbaf
Cinematographer: Ebrahim Ghafori
Composer: Mohammad Reza Darvishi
Cast: Said Mohamadi, Behnaz Jafari, Bahman Ghobadi, Mohamad Karim Rahmati, Rafat Moradi, Mayas Rostami

In Makhmalbaf’s gripping, gently funny parable, a pair of teachers, with blackboards strapped to their backs, whose school has just been bombed out, wander into the mountains near to the Iraq border in search of pupils to teach, but find instead only poverty-stricken, displaced, wandering Kurds, who are more concerned with their own day-to-day survival than with the frivolities of education. Iain.Stott