Ghobadi’s second film (after A Time for Drunken Horses) is once again set in the mountainous regions of Kurdistan along the border between Iran and Iraq. The story follows the quest of three Iranian musicians for Hanareh, a woman with a remarkable singing voice who fled Iran for Iraq twenty-three years earlier. The date is significant for coinciding with the Iranian revolution, which in time led to the banning of women singing in public. Of course, as Marooned in Iraq makes clear, Iraqi Kurds were subject to constant harassment and attack under Saddam Hussein. Despite the grimness of its characters’ living conditions, the film is full of humor, both broad and witty, and music – often punctuated by the sound of jet bombers streaking across the sky. Although the protagonists of Marooned in Iraq are men, Ghobadi pays special attention to the labor and resiliency of Kurdish women. Gradually it becomes clear that the search for Hanareh, who seems as much myth as woman of flesh and blood, is the search for a homeland. – DP