re:mote voices

Title: Where Is My Friend's House? [Khane-ye Doust Kodjast?]
Cast: Babek Ahmed Poor, Ahmed Ahmed Poor, Kheda Barech Defai, Iran Outari
Director: Abbas Kiarostami

Where Is My Friend's House? is the first in a trilogy of films by director Abbas Kiarostami, shown as part of a recent season of Iranian films. Filmed in 1987, the story takes place between a couple of rural villages. Mohamed Reda Nematzadeh (Ahmed Ahmed Poor) is given his final warning at school - if he fails to do his homework in his exercise book one more time, then he will be expelled. So when Ahmed (Babek Ahmed Poor) gets home from school to find that he has taken Mohamed's book he realises that he had better get it back to him. However, while the two boys sit beside each other in school, they live in different villages.

Where Is My Friend's House? is an understated film, following an 8-year-old boy's journey from one village to the next and searching for his friend's house. All despite the obstacles thrown in his way, as no one in the village seems to know his friend, or they know someone with the same family name, and the fact that his mother and grandfather both have other things for him to do instead. It is an anti-climactic piece, which has more to do with it showing the nature of village life and their social structures than whether or not Ahmed succeeds. Obviously the film is a little dated now, being 18 years old, though the way that Ahmed interacts with those around him is likely to still be relevant in a cultural sense.

This film is known as Where Is The Friend's House? as well as Where Is My Friend's House?, I've chosen to go with the later because it scans better.