WOLF AND SHEEP

Afghanistan, 2016, 86 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Shaharbanoo Sadat.

Wolf and Sheep plays like a National Geographic documentary, and ethnographical look at remote tribespeople in Afghanistan. The location photography is, of course, quite striking, the mountain, the desert atmosphere, the small village and its way of life.

The people in the village tend to be shepherds, and there are many sequences with, especially the children, taking the sheep up into the mountains, down the mountains, finding pasture. There are also a number of goats.

There is some mythology about the wolves, credence given to a special wolf which contains a fairy, With some sequences dramatising this aspect of the wolf.

The film opens with a ritual funeral, carried out by the men. It is in the Islamic tradition and there is a sequence also with a man sitting on the mountain ritually reading.

The rest of the film is about the ordinary lives of the people, the adults going about their business, the women and their work, talking – with the touch of gossip.

The film also focuses on the children, young boys, with the sheep, rivalry with weapons. And there are scenes with the girls, including a discussion about the age for the marriage of young girls, as young as six. The mother of one of the boys remarries after her husband’s death and his sister, coming from a distance, takes him away to live with her.

The strength of the film is in the observation rather than any narrative – although, at the end of the film, there are reports of gunmen coming to the village and everyone packing up as much as they can to flee the on comers – and the film ends.