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Donkeys

Nader Farahwaschy // Germany, Iran // 2021 // 13:40 min

Live Action

Synopsis:
The story of two estranged brothers who are both struggling with significant issues in their lives. They set off on a journey through the deserted landscape of Eastern Iran, where they must decide whether or not to help a refugee cross the Irani-Afghan border.

Three Questions for the Director

1. Short Film has a unique way of telling stories and exploring themes. What is it that fascinates you about the short format?

Nader Farahwaschy: Short films are poems, feature films novels. Both trigger our minds and hearts, yet in significantly different ways.

2. The program your film is selected for is called “Hier hast du einen Kopf, jetzt kannst du sehen.”: What connection do you see between your film and that title?

Nader Farahwaschy: The head of the donkey, is never fully visible in ‘DONKEYS’. We either suspect his silhouette in the far distance, or only see parts of its body. In the final scene, the donkey's body seemingly merges with the head of its rider. Who is who? Is it the donkey seeing the world with the eye of a human, or rather vice versa?

3. What film has inspried you most to make films yourself and what part of it do you see in your own work?

Nader Farahwaschy: ‘Taste of Cherry’ and ‘The Wind will carry us’. Both films by Abbas Kiarostami have engraved themselves within me. Their narration and film rhythm make the complexity of life seem weightless. Fiction and reality merge and have a liberating effect on the compulsion to find answers.
The questions asked and the inner confusion of characters, the nondifferentiation between truth and lies, between reality and fiction, and the unanswerability itself are my personal cinematic driving forces.