The film has many painful and sad moments, but also comic ones.

| Feb 14, 2021

This is a road movie unlike any other...

Full Review | Jan 4, 2008

The film, equipped with a sense of humour as well as a certain kind of Middle Eastern magic realism, has a central theme that emphasises the fate of a whole people without a country to call their own.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/6 | Jan 4, 2008

Honours and elevates the unquenchable spirit of its subjects.

| Jan 4, 2008

I am a little unsure that the themes, images and ideas in all this come together as satisfactorily as they should, but it is a serious and worthwhile piece of work from a director with a real cinematic language.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 4, 2008

The savage drama of the landscape, the indomitable optimism of the people and the passion of the ubiquitous music - almost every character is a musician - is universal in its appeal.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 4, 2008

Stylish, but never quite substantial enough, Half Moon never lives up to its stunning opening sequence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 4, 2008

Part quirky road-movie, part mythic fantasia, part rhapsodic celebration - and wholly captivating.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 4, 2008

Surprisingly gripping despite its whimsical subject matter and often very funny.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 4, 2008

Illuminating, surreal, tear-jerking and funny, Half Moon is an unforgettable voyage into a land little seen.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 4, 2008

There's something Styxian about the road travelled here that's reinforced with imagery of death that elevates Ghobadi's tale above the everyday.

| Original Score: 4/6 | Jan 4, 2008

An unflinching and affecting depiction of the region's tragic lunacies.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 4, 2008

Opens our hearts and minds to the special place musicians play in the Kurdish culture and the ways in which they celebrate the human spirit.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 25, 2007

Death may come with the half moon, but there remains a promise of rebirth%u2014the full moon, which illuminates even the desperate landscape of Kurdistan.

| Dec 19, 2007

a fascinating portrait of an underrepresented people, rich in humor, pathos and possible permutations

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 14, 2007

For his poetic fourth feature, Half Moon, Bahman Ghobadi returns to the desolation of the Kurdish borderlands and the enduring optimism of his people.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 14, 2007

Writer-director Bahman Ghobadi's picturesque road trip is less about preserving a musical heritage than accepting one's fate, a mythic trek that's both heartrending and boisterous -- often as hauntingly absurdist as a Kusturica carnival.

| Dec 11, 2007

Balancing earthy humor and scarring tragedy, Bahman Ghobadi's portraits of Kurdish wanderers are particularly expressive of Iranian cinema's sense of hope within instability.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 11, 2007

The Kurds may not yet have a country, but as long as Bahman Ghobadi keeps making movies they have a national cinema.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 31, 2007

...a moving road movie that culminates in a dramatic, music-saturated finale.

| Original Score: A- | Aug 24, 2007