The Girl (Sheila Vand)

A Girl Walks Alone at Night is the first Iranian Vampire Western ever made. Directed by Iranian filmmaker Ana Lilly Amirpour, this film explores the power of isolation in a small town, and the kinds of elements isolation will breed. Set in a fictional Iranian oil town called Bad City, The Girl, played by Sheila Vand, walks alone at night dressed in the traditional black chador seeking out the bad seeds of the city to devour, namely men who are not kind to women. For cinephiles, the aesthetics of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night will remind you of Breathless, directed by French New Wave filmmaker Jean Luc Godard in 1960 as well as Francois Truffaut’s 1959 film 400 Blows—oh, and let me mention Touch of Evil, a classic by Orsen Welles produced in 1958.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is shot in black and white, and Lyle Vincent’s cinematography cloaks the city in a static darkness to produce the feel of a sluggish town with nowhere to go and nothing to offer its youth. The sound is spare, so we are forced to feel the action rather than to take the usual cues a film’s soundtrack gives to its audience. This film will hold your interest. Why? Because girls are not supposed to walk alone at night; there are dangers lurking in every corner to prey on them. Armirpour, however, has turned the tables: Here is a girl vampire who fears nothing and no one but everyone around her is in danger.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night plays through January 15 at the Ross Media Arts Center in Lincoln.

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