Last night, after many years, I watched Bashu, the Little Stranger again. It felt as though I were seeing it for the very first time—the same pounding heart, the same sense of attachment to cinema, amidst the wave of an audience.
This is a film that never expires; it remains a luminous testament in Iranian cinema: a deeply human, emotional, anti-war narrative, created in the very midst of war. And what courage it must have taken to make it.
Bashu, a defenseless child of war, steps into our world with his first leap from the back of a truck. And Nayi (Susan Taslimi), the resilient rural woman, seizes the viewer’s heart from the moment she first appears.
The entire story revolves around the maternal-filial bond that grows between them—an unadorned, natural love that gradually makes us feel like members of the same family. The woman stands at the center of the tale: wrestling with nature, solitude, and survival, while opening her home to a stranger whose language and skin color are not her own.
At first glance, he seems like a being from another world, an E.T. dropped into this green household from a distant ship. Yet in truth, he is a compatriot, wounded by war.
The film is filled with moments that only Bahram Beyzaie could create. The performances of Taslimi and the late Parviz Pourhosseini remain irreplaceable. His brief presence, punctuated by a single, simple word—
“Father…”
—still shakes the heart.
In the final sequence, when the woman senses the danger of a boar attack and the family runs after her, once more we see the woman as the pillar of Beyzaie’s world.
Unparalleled mise-en-scène, a gripping narrative, and precise découpage place Bashu, the Little Stranger in a unique position within the history of our cinema. And yet, at the end, we are left with a sense of longing: longing for the forced exile of Bahram Beyzaie and Susan Taslimi, and grief for Pourhosseini, who can never be replaced.
If only the silver screen still glowed with such human heartbeat…
