To understand Rakhshan Banietemad’s film “Gilaneh” (2005), you don’t need to be a suffering mother with a bent back but a strong will like Naneh Gilaneh. It is enough to give your heart to the rhythm of the film, feel its pulse, and move with its beat.
The misty mountains and plains of northern Iran form a white curtain, veiling Gilaneh’s suffering. Stability and peace are absent here; only waiting remains. This is the crumpled heart of a mother who washes her adult son, combs his hair, and dances around him in hope of her fiancé’s return. Here lies the dead end of desires, yet hope still threads its way through the foggy horizon that Gilaneh gazes upon.
With “Gilaneh”, Banietemad raised the bar for films about the Iran-Iraq War—not through technique, but through emotion, humanity, and insight into the human condition. As in much of her work, she tells the story from the perspective of a mother, a woman. Her story follows a son who rides alone through northern Iran, carrying a pink scarf, visiting his lover, and leaving the scarf as a keepsake until the war ends and he returns for marriage. Hope drifts like fog in the air.
When the son returns, everything has changed: there is no news of his lover, nor of the planned marriage. Naneh Gilaneh bears a heavy burden. She witnesses her child’s decline, and the pain of this suffering is immense. Yet she does not give up. She does not surrender to the dictates of time. She steels herself and confronts her own war—with despair, deprivation, and a life that denied her happiness. Though her son returns weakened, he is alive, and that presence lights hope in her eyes.
Banietemad is not a melodrama director, which makes her work even more impressive. The poetry of her films—the very essence of her words—grabs the audience’s attention unexpectedly, like reading a poem as an omen. She expresses complex social and emotional issues through a cinematic language that evolves naturally with her content.
This evolution can be seen across her works. “Gilaneh” is a genuine maternal poem. “The Blue-Veiled” (1995) explores a love that blinds the eye to differences and disagreements, depicting suffering and despair in a poetic frame. “Under the Skin of the City” (2001), one of Iranian cinema’s most socially aware films, portrays everyday struggles, making viewers feel that the characters live next door. Yet even here, when the focus is on the mother and the burdens she carries, a poetic resonance emerges—not in words or grandiose framing, but in the essence and soul of her characters.
From a filmmaking perspective, Banietemad’s place in Iranian cinema and her lasting works are indisputable. Beyond that, she must be celebrated as an artist who has captured the purest and most profound depictions of mothers on screen.
