The Night It Rained | An Shab ke Barun Amad (1967)

Synopsis

The Night It Rained is undoubtedly Kamran Shirdel's best film and a masterpiece in the history of documentary filmmaking.

In northern Iran, a schoolboy from a village near Gorgan is said to have discovered that the railway had been undermined and washed away by a flood.



As the story goes, when he saw the approaching train, he set fire to his jacket, ran towards the train and averted a serious and fatal accident.

Shirdel's film does not concentrate on the heroic deed promulgated in the newspapers, but on a caricature of social and subtle political behavior - the way in which witnesses and officials manage to insert themselves into the research into this event.

Shirdel uses newspaper articles and interviews with railway employees, the governor, the chief of police, the village teacher and pupils, each of whom tell a different version of the event.

In the end, they all contradict each other, while the group of possible or self-appointed heroes constantly grows.

With his cinematic sleights of hand, Shirdel paints a bittersweet picture of Iranian Society in which truth, rumor, and lie can no longer be distinguished.   

After completion the film was harshly banned and confiscated, and Shirdel was expelled from the Ministry.

It was released seven years later in 1974 to participate in the Third Tehran International Film Festival, where it won the GRAND PRIX by a unanimous vote, only to be banned again until after the revolution.

 Conceived, Written and Directed by Kamran Shirdel
 Cameramen: Naghi Maasoumi, Kamran Shirdel
 Editing: Kamran Shirdel, Fati Dorostian
 Sound: Homayoun Pourmand
 Scripted Narration: Esmail Nouriala
 Narrator: Nosrat Karimi
 Produced by the Ministry of Culture and Art
 Format: 35 mm
 Running time: 35 min.
 B&W, 1967-74 

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