Frontier Blues

In the northern frontier of Iran, director Babak Jalali mines absurdist humour and quiet pathos from the immutable routines of a group of men.

Hassan is a Persian with Coke-bottle glasses whose only pal is his ever-present donkey. His uncle runs a clothing store whose items never seem to fit his shoppers.

A Turkmen minstrel pines for the wife he lost 30 years ago. Together, these characters go through the motions of living while preoccupied with escape. Against visually serene compositions and a plaintive score, Jalali teases out the intense longing hidden behind his characters’ stoic expressions, crafting a humane and drolly charming first feature that leaves an indelible impression.

AIR Post Production handled all of the audio post production for this film, with Paul Langwade taking control of the Neve DFC in Studio 3 at AIR.

The film has been released to some rave reviews, including:

"Frontier Blues is no kind of blockbuster but trust me when I tell you it’s worth a hundred A-Teams. It will warm your heart and stretch your mind at the same time, a goal that too many films no longer even see as being a goal. But if you love cinema and savour how it can operate in your life, then this is a film for you. "

"These four interweaving stories bring a part of the world into your head that you won’t forget. Every scene is a perfectly judged fragment of Iranian reality, and it comes like a gift, blessed with empathy and compositional brilliance. By the end of this film, I felt I knew these people, knew their struggles and felt glad be reminded there are world-class directors emerging, such as Jalali, quietly going about their artistic business while the world turns and reason burns." - Andrew O'Hagan - Evening Standard

"Inventive Sound Design" - Sukhdev Sandhu - Telegraph.co.uk