The Amazing Adventures of Archibald Esq.
A Doggish Film
Sometimes it takes a good thing a long time to be noticed. And so it is with a film shot in 2004. It wasn’t until the late summer of 2006 when the London newspapers begun to be busy reviewing the film ‘Stray Dogs’ — which has won critical acclaim and a number of awards to date, including one from UNICEF, the international charity for children.
Marziyeh Meshkini, wife of director Mohsen Makhmalbaf and mother of film-makers Samira and Hana, follows her feature debut The Day I Became a Woman with a child’s-eye odyssey. Reviewers in broadsheets and tabloids alike say that it’s a marvellous mix of comedy, tragedy and wisdom.
Marziyeh Meshkini, of Iran, was inspired to film Stray Dogs after visits to Afghanistan assisting to select film locations for another movie. There she saw children leaving jail, and assumed they were also convicts, until she realised that the children had been ‘orphaned’ and it was in fact their mothers who were in jail. Children would sneak into the jails to sleep at night with their mothers and then ‘escape’ again in the morning, to fill their days with begging, shuffling through the streets and playing with stray dogs. Based on her observations, the Stray Dogs story of a boy, a girl and a dog came into being.
Stray Dogs
Directed by Marziyeh Meshkini
Written by Marziyeh Meshkini
With Zahed , Gol Ghoti, Agheleh Rezaïe and Twiggy the Dog, awoof!
Country Iran (filmed in Afghanistan)
Year of Production 2004
Running Time 93 minutes
In the film the children are suddenly barred from visiting their mother at night, and have to fend for themselves. The brother and sister rescue a stray dog who was being attacked by other children as being a ‘western’ dog. Smypathising with the underdog, the children and their new-found friend, Twiggy the dog, venture together into an adult world that they must understand fast in order to survive.
Shot in Afghanistan in 2003 and set on the second anniversary of 9/11, the film is based on real-life situations that Meshkini encountered while scouting locations for her daughter’s film At Five in the Afternoon. The reviewers say that the film is visually striking and graced by such surreal images as a ‘house’ that is little more than a TV set inside an abandoned car. Needless to say the movie brings to the screen a unique and constantly suprising world.
Methinks I’m going to have to take a peek at this film. ‘Specially as the dog-star is a canine called Twiggy, as I know a certain dog in Wakefield Quebec of the same moniker that I’m really looking forward to visiting someday… And who know? Perhaps Stray Dogs will be as poignant a dog-world film as the charming and understated realism of the Argentinian film Bombon El Perro….
Besides, there may be new doggish celebrities in the making! So — I recommend all those with houndishness in their hearts to see this film. Alas, being restricted from movie cinemas, I’ll have to wait for it to come out on DVD.
Arrooof! Archie
P.S. A little Googling revealed that the title ‘Stray Dogs’ is a popular one. So you’ve been warned: the Iranian/Afghanistan film is not to be confused with American Director Catherine Crouch’s film (2001) of the same name. Nor should it be confounded with the Japanese film noir entitled ‘Stray Dog’ by Akira Kurosawa. Awoof!
Posted 15 Oct 06
One Response to “A Doggish Film”
Leave a Reply
©2008 Roleta Archibald, Awoof!™
[…] Marziyeh Meshkini of Iran was inspired to film Stray Dogs after visits to Afghanistan. There she saw children leaving jail and assumed they were also convicts, until she realised that the children had been ‘orphaned.’ It was not the children but their mother’s who were in jail. Children would sneak into the jails to sleep at night with their mothers and then ‘escape’ again in the morning, to fill their days with begging, shuffling through the streets and playing with stray dogs. Based on her observations, a film about a boy, a girl and a dog came into being. Awoof! Archie […]
Archie - Dog tales - Stray Dogs @ 10:39 pm, 06 May 2007