Directed by Seyed Habib Omid Hashemi
Director Seyed Habib Omid Hashemi’s film follows the Bakhtiari on their transhumance from their winter pastures on the Khuzestan plain to their summer pastures in Luristan and on their return journey from Shulabad to Khuzestan. Each journey involves walking 230 kilometers in a period of just two weeks. Working alongside nomads and witnessing the richness of their way of life and know-how, Hashemi became enthralled by the simplicity and ingenuity of the Bakhtiari’s ancestral culture, describing their independent way of life as a “dance in symbiosis with nature… Within this vast choreography, their economy, habitat, and culture intertwine harmoniously, creating a thousand-year-old tango between man and nature. However, both partners seem exhausted, and this ancestral dance is in danger of coming to an end.”
Seyed Habib Omid Hashemi was born in Tehran in 1986. After moving with his family to Turkey and then Pakistan, he went to Paris to study at the University of Paris 8, where he later became a lecturer. He then went on to study with Marina Abramovic and work as an intern and photographer for the American director Robert Wilson. Together with Arnaud Labelel-Rojoux, Hashemi formed the Rekhneh Collective, which organizes public and participatory experiences in Iran and is home to The Abramovic Method, an ongoing project bringing people together in a shared experience to connect with themselves and each other. Since then, Hashemi has spent time studying yoga in India and sailing with Australian artist John Allen, documenting his cross-oceanic sailing trip to collect “low-tech” examples from around the world. In January 2023, Hashemi returned to Paris with a postdoctoral fellowship as an artist-researcher at Paris Lumière University.
