The French Wild Bunch Company announced that the Two-Legged Horse Samira Makhmalbaf’s latest film will be shown in theaters throughout France simultaneously with the Cannes Film Festival. Previously, Two Legged Horse had won the Jury Grand Prize from Spain’s San Sebastian and best film score from Belgium and Jury Prize from Rome Festival.
Two legged Horse was filmed in Sarpol city north of Afghanistan and a hand grenade was thrown at the camera during shooting that led to the wounding of over twenty people. Two months later one of the injured persons died at a hospital.
Samira who’s in Paris for press conferences said to the reporters: “This film is about the spirit of violence. Violence that flows in people’s relationships. Violence that the society inflicts on individuals or individuals inflict on each other. Some of the audience in various countries told me that at the beginning of the film they thought it was a film about violence among others but half way through they saw themselves on screen and at the end of the film they were asking themselves: “Are we the horse or the jockey? Where have we given rides to others and where have we rode on others’ shoulders? How much has the society loaded us and how much have we loaded on the society and pulled the curb to halter it.”
Tolstoy says: “The artist portrays the laceration of a human by a wolf as such that the reader feels the ripping. In this film I tried to depict violence in people’s relationships to the extent to make the viewer experience this violence and distance away from it. In fact, this film is all about criticizing the spirit of violence. Not the kind of violence that is shown in Holly Wood films where the viewer enjoys and it helps the sales of the film but the kind of violence that makes the viewer feel a human shame and transcend violence.
“If the mirror reflects you differently
Correct yourself, for it is wrong to break the mirror.”
The Two Legged Horse is Samira Makhmalbaf’s fourth feature film after Apple, Blackboard and Five in the Afternoon. With the film Apple Samira received Cannes Jury Prize as world’s youngest director in the history of cinema, The films Blackboard in 2000 and Five in the Afternoon in 2003 both won the Jury Prize from Cannes Film Festival. The Guardian newspaper introduced Samira as one of the world’s top 40 film directors and Jean Luc Goddard has repeatedly expressed his admiration of her films.
Two Legged Horse has not obtained screening permit in Iran adding to the collections of films by the Makhmalbaf family banned in Iran. At the present, 11 films by the Makhmalbaf family have been banned in Iran:
1-A Time of Love, Mohsen Makhmalbaf
2-Nights of Zayandeh Rud. Mohsen Makhmalbaf
3-Sex & Philosophy, Mohsen Makhmalbaf
4-Chair, Mohsen Makhmalbaf
5-Scream of the Ants, Mohsen Makhmalbaf
6-Stray Dogs, Marziyeh Meshkiny
7-Joy of Madness, Hana Makhmalbaf
8-Buddha Collapsed out of Shame, Hana Makhmalbaf
9-Samira and Unprofessional Actors, Hana Makhmalbaf
10-Two-Legged Horse, Samira Makhmalbaf
11-Man who Came with Snow, Marziyeh Meshkiny, Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Mohsen Makhmalbaf in objection to the banning of his films and books left Iran four years ago. The Makhmalbaf family during these four years has made four feature films and three documentaries in India, Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
