The film opens with the semi-covered face of a woman, who is regarding herself at the mirror. A voice in off comments on: «This world certainly doesn’t lack horrible things, and there would be even more of horrible things, if the man looked away from them». In the leper colony of Bababaghi in Tabriz, a community of men and women of every age living in complete isolation, is busy with the everyday matters: the documentary reveals the human nature of these inmates through the imagines of their school life, childish games and returned looks, testifying their struggle for a dignified life in a reality of great pain. The poetess’ voice takes turns with the main characters’ voices and with the mournful murmur of the prayers thanking a God who perpetuates the gift of life.

Screenplay Forough Farrokhzad
Photography (b/w) Soleiman Minasian
Editing Forough Farrokhzad
Sound Mahmud Hangval e Samad Pur-Kamali
Production Golestan Film (su commissione di The Society for Assistance to Lepers)
Year of production 1962
Format 35 mm

Print from the archive of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

Forough Farrokhzad

Forough Farrokhzad is the major Iranian poetess of the 20th century. She died in a car accident at the age of 32, after having published four collections of poems. In the film world, Forough Farrokhzad imposed herself in 1962, as she directed The House is black, which was awarded at the Festival of Oberhausen. 1958 she started to work with Ebrahim Golestan’s film company. Among her contributions to cinema, we must remember the editing work for the documentary A Fire, which was awarded 1959 at the film festival of Venice, the soundtrack of Wave, coral, and rock (1962) and the co-direction of The mud brick and the mirror (1965).