The Ballad of Tara

A powerful tale of a lonely female protagonist coming to terms with an incomprehensible reality based on Iranian folklore, or a Persian variation on a theme made popular by the cult French comedy, Les Visiteurs. Tara (Susan Taslimi’s debut), a widowed mother, comes across an ancient warrior looking for a lost sword in the forest. The mysterious visitor from another realm shows up more and more frequently and strikes a closer relationship with the beautiful woman. In a distinctively enigmatic style, Beyzaie weaves a riveting tale in which festive rituals are accompanied by dark magic. Completed in 1979, the film had a very short screen life. According to Ehsan Khoshbakht, following the Islamic revolution, the authorities could not tolerate a film in which a woman was “both desired and at the same time in charge of her destiny.” After a one-off screening at the Cannes Film Festival, the film was shelved. Now restored, Ballad of Tara re-establishes the memory of the eminent filmmaker, whose oneiric The Stranger and the Fog  also features in the festival programme.

Sebastian Smoliński

Bahram Beyzaie (b. 1938) is an Iranian screenwriter and director. He was a playwright and scholar of Iranian theater before turning to cinema in the late ‘60s. His feature debut Downpour (1971) made him a pioneer of the Iranian New Wave. He was expelled from the university in 1981 as a result of the Iranian Revolution, but he has continued to write and direct films, the most prominent of which have been Bashu, the Little Stranger (1986) and Travellers (1992).

Restored in 2022 from the original negatives at Roashana Studios in Tehran. The restoration was supervised by director and producer Bahram Beyzaie.