THE SACRED FOOTSTEPS

Iran, 2004, 100 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Mohammad Mahdi Asgarpour (pictured above).

The Sacred Footsteps is a film that would play well only in Iran itself or in countries who understood the social and religious conditions that it portrays. It would be too difficult for a western audience.

The film focuses on a young man who is about to go on a pilgrimage to a shrine. He has been doing odd jobs in the village where he has grown up, assists the expert who is leading excavations of an old site, expecting to find a temple. During his stay at the shrine, he has a dream and is directed by an outstretched arm to return to the village to try to discover who his parents were.

In the village, the people help on the site of the excavations, run shops, carry out their ordinary lives. However, they are often cantankerous with each other, shouting and yelling. They are particularly severe towards a young boy whom they chase and beat.

After looking at a portrait of the particular people, especially the middle-aged and older men and their own disputes about shop-owning and lawsuits, it emerges in flashbacks that the young man's mother had been killed by the townspeople. She had been pregnant, one of the women had taken the baby and brought it up with her own child, their playing as brother and sister. There was speculation as to who was the father or who had had relationships with the woman. However, it seems that she was married or linked to an artist who had decorated the shrine and who was now dead. None of this had been told to the young man.

He had fallen in love with the girl who was supposed to be his sister, she is about to be married to another man. The small boy overhears the discussions about the truth and finally reveals it to the young man, the townspeople admit what had happened. He attends the ceremony of the marriage between his stepsister and the young man, finally holding a branch of lamps and moving with it in ceremonial ritual signifying that he was of age, accepted, and reconciled with the villagers. However, next morning the boy sees on the wall of his hut a drawing which indicates that he himself has gone on a long journey.

The film uses many Iranian religious rituals, ceremonies as well as folklore and speculation about moral law in Islam.