User Reviews

In My Sweet Pepper Land, director Hiner Saleem uses Western imagery to trace the survival of two idealistic outcasts in Iraqi Kurdistan. The film does not parody the American Western, but rather suggests that with Saddam Hussein's ouster Cowboy Dubya left the area like the lawless frontier of 19th Century America. A tribal warlord rules like the old gang boss. Horsemen appear beside modern cars and under airplanes. But the "honour" to be viciously defended here is the Code of the East, as teacher Govend's brothers assail her on rumours of licentiousness.

The hero Baran was a Kurdish war hero who accepts a frontier sheriff job so he doesn't have to put up with his mother's matchmaking. He has the strength and stolid character of the standard Western hero from Bill Hart to our Clint. But there's a difference. He likes music, like Elvis, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. This inflection raises him above the standard US cowboy hero and reminds us this film is about a cultural invasion. Hence Elvis's "You're square, but Baby I don't care" and "Rockabilly Man," which contrast to the teacher's deft play on a traditional percussion. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.

One of the biggest problems in Kurdish cinema is the lack of new ideas. Stories about war, poverty, loss of home, displacement, orphanhood and search for missing persons are used over and over, making Kurdish films not an industry of all kinds of films, but into a genre of similarly themed war films.

Repetitive themes and tropes also plague western films and it would take some really imaginative thinking (such as a robot-powered theme park set in the Old West, that is Westworld) to create something new.

This film is a genre mashup. It does not revolutionize the genre of the western, but gives it a new breath of life, by setting it in modern times (today) and in the Kurdlands rather than the Old West.

There are many parallels between the Old West and the fringes of Iraqi Kurdistan and this film plays on that. Places with low populations, far from the city, corrupt local authority, the difficulty of the central government in applying law and order, the difficulty or the terrain, low levels of education, lots of guns and the potential for conflict.

We have two stories here, Baran, a sheriff who wants to apply law and order to the region and Govend, a teacher who wants to teach and bring education to the children of the area.

The film does a good job with the story, even if it is predictable and straightforward.

My issue with this film is that it is fluffy, cute and nice, when it could've been much better. This film had the potential of being a 10/10 film, but chose to polish the edge off and make it a simple flick.

For example, Baran and Govend are good, while Aziz Aga is bad. It's straightforward, black and white, no gray, no nuances, no subtlety. The Kurdish state is good and local tribal chiefs are bad. It's too simplistic.

I would've loved to see a complex and complicated relationship between Baran and Govend. I'd love to see a film where Aziz Aga, despite being a corrupt absolute ruler turns out to be right. Or it turns out to be that he is a peshmerga war hero who became corrupt. Or that he was also the sheriff once, giving Baran a glimpse of his own future. I want to see how the smuggling market is all gray area, with the central government using its power not to shut down all smuggling, but just its competition. Show the hypocrisy of the Iraqi Kurdish government in working with the Turkish army against separatist Kurds in Turkey. Perhaps Aziz Aga is a Pan- Kurdist who sees the big picture whereas the Iraqi Kurdish government is happy with having liberated a slice of Kurdistan.

Show how parents have to choose between educating their teens or making them work on farms. Show how parents disagree with the syllabus of the central government's school.

You don't have to show all these things, but you should show at least something deeper. This film is Disney-like in its simplicity.

Great films are about subjectivity, about hard choices and difficult compromises, about change, things that make you think. This doesn't do any of these things.

These are things that this film could've made us think about:

Is the central government's rule absolute? This central government appoints Baran from Erbil to be the sheriff of this small town. Does this small town not get a say in this decision? There is an interesting strong central state versus regional powers discussion to be had, but this film ignores it.

Is Iraqi Kurdistan the final stop in the Kurdish liberation movement? Should Erbil fight Kurdish separatist movements in Iran/Syria/Turkey that use its territory for smuggling or as a safe haven?

What if a local corrupt chieftain involved in drug trafficking spends his money on building schools, orphanages, hospitals, etc.? Should the central government's sheriff shut down his operation? Why? If the central government's contribution to the area is just a single sheriff and some firearms, aren't the locals better off with the corrupt chieftain?

Kurdish films need to be more like life and less like fairy tales.

This is a good film, nonetheless, but there's no compelling reason for non-Kurds or non-Kurdophiles to watch it, when there are many better and deeper films out there.

...just as an addition to the 2014 review by "junocreate" ... to me 'My Sweet Pepper Land" proved especially appealing by its symbolic value for probably a major part of our world, contrasting with some far more widely known world parts, certainly in most movies, where in the end, law and order seem to rule, especially for the daily lives of us, westerners, who are permanently being blinded to most of what is going on, and are unable to interfere effectively with those wildly exercising their power and injustice by even unjust laws nearby, as would hold for the worlds easterners too.

Sadly, in real live, we are extremely short of common people like the film's hero Baran, who has learned how to effectively discriminate between the need for moral tolerance and the need for actively killing. In the movie, too, I ended up fearing for Baran's short time future in the circumstances, though he would seems to being happy at that moment.

In short, the film demonstrates our worlds most pressing dilemma in an involving and easy to grasp way. Great movie.

Law is head and Love is body! All human being need all of them! Nice play of Golshifteh Farahani and Aslan! Thanks Huner Saleem