Towards the end of 2007, when our fears of a military conflict between the U.S. and Iran were at their peak, Make Films Not War resolved to use images and stories to continue building a cultural bride between our two societies, even as our governments ratcheted up their language of war.
We made contact with award-winning Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi (HALF MOON, TURTLES CAN FLY, A TIME FOR DRUNKEN HORSES), and discussed how best to go about this. We decided to commission five up-and-coming Iranian filmmakers, two of them as young as 10 and 13, to produce a series of short videos on the themes of war and peace. Ghobadi's company, Tehran based MIJ Productions, co-produced.
About 'Runaway'
This experimental film follows a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war as he revisits scenes of battle, and relives the terrible losses that the war left behind. A hallucinatory rendering of the mental and emotional anguish that remains well after the battlefield has been cleared.