All the Mountains Give follows two young Kurdish men who make a living carrying smuggled household goods on their backs across the mountainous borderlands between Iran and Iraq. The trade, known as kolbari, pays little for back-breaking labour and great danger, but other work in the region is scarce.
Ahead of the film’s release at Bertha DocHouse, we caught up with the first-time director Arash Rakhsha to discuss his strikingly cinematic and profound portrait.
Filmed over the course of six years, All the Mountains Give fully immerses the viewer in the gruelling journeys of the kolbars. What was it like to film under such demanding conditions?
The first year was extremely difficult and frustrating. The first ten or so trips I took with the smugglers were almost fruitless. After getting frustrated, I thought it would be better to film the scenes handheld and use zoom lenses instead of fixed lenses. But the inherent bitterness of the subject and the excessive externalization of tensions through the handheld camera, which was in stark contrast to the internal tension of the fixed camera, discouraged me from doing so. Continuous learning from being in difficult situations made the path of cinematography more bearable and easier year by year.
At first, all the smugglers were very stressed out because of the camera and the possibility of being caught. But gradually my presence was accepted as a member of the group, and in this sense, the filming was more relaxed. Each trip with the smugglers was filmed more than six times on average. For example, in the mule smuggling sequence, which was filmed seven times, if you look closely, in some shots the ground is covered with spring greenery and the trees have just sprouted, and in some shots the trees are dry, and the final shots were taken in early winter… and in the meantime, the number of people in front of the camera increases and decreases… in the editing, I tried to make the sequences look as coherent as possible.
Connection to the land plays an important role in this story. How did you approach capturing and conveying this profound relationship through your filmmaking?
As you know well, location plays a very important role not only in documentaries but also in fiction films and commercials and life itself. Meaning undergoes drastic transformations in different locations. Let’s imagine Strindberg play “Father” once in a dilapidated building and once in a castle, and they will be two completely different stories with different meanings. For me, location and environment are very important. Not only does it affect our personality, but it often shapes the way we look at life. Perhaps I am not exaggerating if I say that location is always a living being for me.
In this documentary, the role of location for me was to go back and forth between an antagonist and the sublime (in the Kantian sense: a deep sense of wonder and grandeur). And my attempt was to portray this inner feeling as I felt it.
The film juxtaposes tense moments of hardship with more intimate and tender portrayals of family life. How did you seek to balance these contrasting aspects of the film?
Part of it was formed in filming and avoiding using a handheld camera. This decision made the work much more difficult and longer, but I think it was a very important and correct decision. And it overlaps perfectly with the documentary’s central theme: solitude. The bitterness and darkness of the film were significantly diluted in this way. The other part was formed in the post production and shaping of the narrative. Without contradiction, no concept can be understood. Cold is perceived when we feel heat.
All the Mountains Give plays at Bertha DocHouse from Friday 11 April. Book tickets here.