Charsho

Preparations are taking place for a young woman’s wedding in a small village in the Iranian countryside. People are making music, food dishes are brought out and the women select their finest garments. The mother says goodbye to her daughter with the words, ‘Go, have fun with your friends and find happiness with your husband’. The women take the bride into the fields, where they dance and laugh among the profusely blooming sunflowers, until the future husband comes to pick up his bride to take her to his village. It is a colourful sight: the house with the plastered walls and the doors and posts painted blue, the richly embroidered scarves, the flowers. But it has an undercurrent of melancholy that says something more about the traditions of the country and the position of the woman and wife. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)