The Siren

Beautiful animated film about Abidan and the first Gulf War. The film is set in 1980 in Abadan in the south, where Omid, 14 years old, is growing up. He has to save a penalty kick during a shoot-out - and lets the ball through into the goal because bombs are falling on the refinery at the same time. The war is on: the Iraqis are besieging the city, shelling it, bombing it. The inhabitants are exposed to death. We experience this war from the perspective of a teenager: his mother and younger siblings are able to flee, Omid stays in Abadan with his grandfather - his older brother has volunteered for the front.

The special thing about The Siren is that the film stays completely with the Iranians in a situation in which the alternative to a religious state is being overrun by the enemy, Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And so the Iranian situation itself, shortly after the revolution, is not - or only very incidentally - thematised. It's about the war that nobody here wants and that nobody really understands. It's about people who have a revolution behind them, who have to bow to new rules (headscarves for women!), but who are above all confronted by a faceless enemy from outside.

The story meanders, has no destination for a long time - this is intentional, and the war has neither a purpose nor a foreseeable end. It is only when Omid overhears officers talking about a possible final and undefendable attack by Iraqi troops that he makes a decision. And he carries out this decision persistently and consistently.