A group of young people are trying to teach Kurdish in a small town, a land and time where the teaching and speaking of the language is forbidden. Part of their work is to print clandestine schoolbooks in underground schools and distribute them. One of the girls in the group, Aseke, is killed on a mission and her friends decide to carry out the final request in her will. She had been brought up with a black horse, now in the remote Anatolian mountains, and her request is to bring the horse back so that they might meet one last time before she is buried. Shahram Alidi paints an almost mythological and surreal portrait of the region while always staying close to the surface of the larger current political state. Bold, atmospheric and poignant at the same time, Black Horse Memories is a testament to the plight of the disappeared people and love of nature. |