This epic, silent-era documentary follows the heroic annual migration of the nomadic Bakhtiari tribes of Iran through spectacular landscapes.
Along with journalist Marguerite Harrison, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack – the duo responsible for the early sound masterpiece King Kong (1933) – travelled through Turkey and territory that is now Iraq, searching for the nomads. Finding them in the prairies of southwest Iran, the filmmakers joined them for their spring migration through inhumanly arduous routes, crossing the wild Karun River on inflated goatskins and climbing the 4,200-metre Zard-Kuh with bare hands – sometimes even barefoot. The scenery is breathtaking, and the feat, to guide 50,000 people and half a million livestock across impossibly snowy and stony terrain, awe-inspiring.
