The Stranger and the Fog

The great discovery of last year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato classic film festival in Bologna. Unavailable for decades, this is a rare gem of the Iranian New Wave, which was brought to an end by the Islamic Revolution in 1979, tying the hands of most of the filmmakers active at the time. The director himself recalled: “The Stranger and the Fog, or at least some of its most essential images came right out of my nightmares.” Indeed, from the very first moment the audience is transported into an archaic, mystical, and ritualistic space: a fishing village where an amnesiac stranger arrives in a boat. The suspicious villagers are reluctant to accept Ayat, who falls in love with a woman who has recently lost her husband. The time, space, and events that take place in the village become increasingly mysterious, confusing, and threatening; the stranger moves as if in a fog, he often returns to the starting point, not recognising himself, nor the surrounding reality.

Inspired by a dreamlike ethnography and resembling Andrzej Żuławski’s On the Silver Globe, Beyzaie’s film is a skillfully staged anti-crime drama. At the same time, it is a rite of passage to the other side of cinema, where meanings, symbols, and possibilities constantly switch places and remain equally elusive.

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 4K in 2023 by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Bahram Beyzaie. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. The restoration used the original camera and sound negatives and was carried out at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory. Special thanks to Ehsan Khoshbakht.

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