I came across this very strange and wonderful film called A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night released in 2014. I heard that it had a female Iranian director, takes place in Iran and is in Persian – so I jumped to the conclusion that this was an Iranian homegrown film. But two minutes into the film the viewer quickly realizes two things – that the film was very much influenced by the early black and white work of Jim Jarmusch and that there is absolutely no way this film could have been made in Iran. Not unless the director Ana Lily Amirpour wanted to spend much of her life in prison or perhaps worse. And upon a little research I discovered that the film was made in California and the director is an American citizen.


It is a wonky witty genre blender and the director called it an "Iranian Vampire Spaghetti Western". To that I would add elements of dystopian noir, feminism and stoic romance as well. It takes place somewhere in Iran in a nearly deserted town called Bad City that feels as doomed and lonely as the dark side of the moon. The few people living there are corroding from the inside – hookers, junkies, thieves, drug dealers, party girls – and among them at night walks a brooding female vampire dressed in a black hijab and looking for company and comfort food. The film is laden with black and white eerie atmosphere, long dark shadows, lonely streets, robotic heavy machines pounding away and a sound track that is terrific and very eclectic. The director’s choice and use of music from spaghetti western style to Iranian to pop is near perfect. It has become one of my favorite soundtracks.