The casting of amateur actors, shifting between fiction and reality, and the format of a road movie are some of the elements that place A Marooned in Iraq squarely in the tradition of Iranian cinema with which we have become familiar. The director of this film, though, takes a more ethnographic and specific approach than did his predecessors such as Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf. When Iraqi bombs raid Iran’s Kurdistan, a Kurdish refugee musician forms a band with his two sons and sets off on a journey to find his missing wife who had left for Kurdistan before the Iran-Iraq war broke out. As the band searches for their wife and mother who was known to have a mystical voice, the film resolves into an Odyssey where the road and the songs accompanying them represent a search for the meaning of life. As they travel along the road and make new friends, the band’s tragic quest turns into a hopeful one. Numerous faces of people who remember their lives and the songs they have sung during the better days fill the screen, while the rhythmical tunes and the theatrical humor reflect upon Iran’s narrative tradition. (Lee Sang-yong)