Mystery Poster

The language on this poster is Persian, but there is very little written information. The top line says "When my father returns" [vaqti pedaram bar migardad]. I take this as both a caption for the painting and the title of the film. In the painting the girl seems to be saying this to the boy. The characters in red on the right side say "Eastman color" and the black characters on the source line at the bottom left say "Product of Turkman Films" [mahsul torkman film]. The poster measures 26.5" x 38.5".

The painting and the source line suggest to me that this poster did not come from Iran, or at least represents a film that was not about anything that happened in Iran, which is the country of origin of every other Persian movie poster I've seen. The people by the railroad tracks at the bottom don't look Iranian, and they are in a cold climate on flat terrain. This might be Tajikistan, Kazakhistan, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, some other part of Central Asia or the Caucasus. These are all places with cold plains areas where Persian is spoken by parts of the population and they are also places with Persian-speaking Turkoman minorities.

My hunch is that this is a poster for a film that was made in or about Tajikistan or Afghanistan.

Since I can't get much information from the written text (no cast or crew names, no director, no film location) I have to speculate about the film based on the information in the image. From their dress, it seems the children are from some Muslim tribal group. The pot and cup the girl is carrying on her back suggest the tribe is nomadic. The man on the crutches at the bottom is probably the returning father, who seems to have lost his lower right leg in fighting somewhere and is returning home by rail. He may have been fighting with the Soviet army in Afghanistan.

I would love to see the film! The poster was designed to make me feel that way.

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