Director: Ana Lily Amirpour | Iran/USA | Fiction | 2014 | 99 mins
Film source: Kino Lorber
Writer/Director Ana Lily Amirpour’s first feature A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has been described as a “Middle Eastern feminist vampire romance” but it’s much more than that. In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a vampire. Lavishly shot in black and white, the camera floats through each scene, hypnotizing the viewer just as the main character The Girl (Sheila Vand) might do before she finishes off her victims. She fills her days listening to American indie-rock & pop records and nights picking off despicable men one by one. Exec-produced by Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings, Maniac), Girl is far from a traditional vampire or horror film. Similarities can be drawn to independent standouts in the genre like John Landis’s Innocent Blood, and the David Lynch produced Nadja. At its dark, comedic (and romantic) heart, Girl is a tale of a lonely soul trying to find her place in a world – a world where a vampire isn’t the worst monster.