BALLAD OF A WHITE COW (2020, IRN) Movie review, plot, trailer

Another shocking and shocking drama about guilt, conscience, (im) morality and the absurd system is coming to us from Iran. The “Ballad of the White Cow” was screened at numerous world festivals, won a film co-directed and written by Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Sanaeeha and many awards, and the film was shot in typical Iranian realistic style. It is already clear to us in the introductory scene that it will be heavy colors. The woman is at the entrance to a prison near Tehran, and after the guard tells her that the time of the visit is over, she begs him to let him go because her husband will be executed later that day. The atmosphere is chamber-like by default, with a static camera, no background music, and a year after her husband was executed for a woman named Mina (played by co-director Moghadam) a new shock arrives – her husband was not guilty of the crime he was convicted of .

Some clerk just tells her coldly – sorry old woman, we fucked up a bit. The guy who killed the man for whose murder Mina’s husband was convicted and executed pleaded guilty, she is entitled to a specific amount as compensation from the state as this is something that apparently did not happen the first time. Of course the woman working on the strip at the dairy is left alone with her daughter’s deafblindness in complete shock. But it is clear to her that she is completely helpless, and since she is now alone and has no husband, the landlord throws her out of the apartment because it is obviously a shame to have a wife without a husband in the apartment. The mini doesn’t make it easy for the family either. Her late husband’s brother is trying to force her to marry him now which she doesn’t even want to hear.

Her ex-father-in-law and mother-in-law plan to take the money she will receive as compensation from the state, and when she rejects her brother-in-law’s marriage offers and other offers from her late husband’s family, she threatens to take away her daughter’s custody. In moments when Mini seems to have no help, a mysterious benefactor will appear in her life. Middle-aged Reza (Alireza Sanifar), a man with a sad expression on his face, an obviously depressed and unhappy guy will introduce himself as a friend of her late husband and will start helping her. He will first give her money because the cacti remained indebted to the deceased, then he will find her an apartment, and the main question of this striking drama will be – who exactly is this good man and why is he doing all this?

Well, it will become clear to the viewer much faster than Mina who Reza really is and what his motives are to appear in her life. Of course, good Reza has a lot to do with her life, and secrets as secrets, they are destined to be revealed someday, but by then these two sad and broken people will already be closer. What connects them are the misfortunes and tragic fates they have experienced, and “Ballad of a White Cow” is another in a series of films that not only slightly follow in the footsteps of the fantastic winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin “There is no Evil” by Mohammad Rassulof. the justice system and the death penalty, but also deals with the topic of a patriarchal society in which a woman is obviously nobody and nothing without a man by her side.

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