Screen/Society--"The Stranger and the Fog" (Bahram Beyzaie, 1974)

Film Screening:

"The Stranger and the Fog"
(Bahram Beyzaie, 1974, 146 min, Iran, Farsi with English Subtitles, DCP)

NEW 4K RESTORATION by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Bahram Beyzaie.

"Long considered an impossible-to-see 'holy grail' of Iranian cinema, the dreamlike THE STRANGER AND THE FOG begins when Ayat washes up in a boat on the shore of a small village, wounded and unconscious. With little memory of his past and fears his assailants will return, he falls in love with a young widow, causing tension with the family of her deceased husband. They settle down and enjoy a period of relative peace-until more strangers arrive from the sea in search of Ayat, putting the village in peril. Both otherworldly and visceral, THE STRANGER AND THE FOG was banned in Iran after the 1979 revolution." - Wexner Center for the Arts

"THE STRANGER AND THE FOG may be considered the first folk horror film in the history of Iranian cinema." - Farshid Kazemi

""One of the most distinctive recent rediscoveries of international cinema, the Iranian director Bahrām Beyzāêi's 1974 drama, THE STRANGER AND THE FOG, is both a passionate romance and a teeming action film, uniting history and legend, anthropology and mysticism." - Richard Brody

"Erice's fourth feature is a stirring tale about memory, identity, and friendship, and it feels deeply, almost alarmingly personal." - Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture