It's Winter (2006)

Rafi Pitts' It's Winter, a visually stunning film about the impossibility of returning home, puts you in its landscape so firmly that you practically can breathe the air of the chilly winter on the screen, feeling your lungs hurt and your throat stiffen. Cam you imagine Reed desert in Iran? Well, then you can pretty much envisage what this film is like. Yes, there is alienation and yes there is a correspondence between the internal and the external. Mostly, these metaphorical landscapes do not become too blunt and for that we can give our thanks to the cinematographer, who has a marvellous grasp of colors and texture. A grim-looking landscape of industry and infrastructure turns into a journey of the soul. In this film, we have to guess at much of what is going on. The story and the characters remain quite mysterious. A man leaves his daughter and wife to go abroad. Another man heads out into the big city, looking for a job. He meets a friend and lands a job, but a miserable job without pay doesn't make anyone thrive. He meets a woman and they get married. It turns out that ----. Well, I won't spoil it. The film problematizes what it is to find a home within an impossible, barren world. Even though I was moved by many things in this film, I kept worrying about the gender perspective, especially since the female main character remains a mystery - or let's be fair; a bigger mystery than the male characters. This is the kind of film in which women are passive victims, and the men's activity are ruined by bad fate. But this of course also means that the film takes a critical perspective on power and powerlessness. The dream of a man 'looking for something better', is brutally crushed. Independence and manly freedom - these are dangerous ideals that make people miserable. Here, everyone is powerless, mute, almost lifeless. The little life we see is the friendship/love between two men. But also here, the wintry landscape seems to eat up the space for human relations. It's winter is a miserable, yet extremely beautiful, film.