Bashu, the Little Stranger

New 4K restoration by Roashana Studios

Best Restored Film, 2025 Venice Film Festival

Young Bashu loses his family when bombs rain on his hometown. With nowhere to go, he stows away on a truck that drops him off in Iran’s verdant northern regions, where he, a dark-skinned Arab-speaker, doesn’t understand the local language. There, he meets a mother who takes him into her home, against the intolerant clamor of her neighbors.

A powerful, poetic drama of empathy to strangers and compassion during wartime, BASHU, THE LITTLE STRANGER was initially shelved in Iran for not being properly jingoistic during the Iran-Iraq War. But its call for peace, inter-ethnic co-existence, and attention to war’s exiles has helped the film endure as one of Iranian cinema’s true classics. In 1999, Persian Picture World magazine’s poll of 150 critics and professionals named it the best Iranian film of all time.