A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
Ana Lily Amirpour | USA | 2014
Rating: R16 violence, drug use & sexual material Runtime: 100 minutes
| Director: Ana Lily Amirpour Producers: Justin Begnaud, Sina Sayyah Screenplay: Ana Lily Amirpour Cinematography: Lyle Vincent Editor: Alex O’Flinn Music: Bei Ru | Sheila Vand (The Girl) Arash Marandi (Arash) Marshall Manesh (Hossein ‘The Junkie’) Mozhan Marnò (Atti ‘The Prostitute’) Dominic Rains (Saeed ‘The Pimp’) Rome Shadanloo (Shaydah ‘The Princess’) |
We’ve managed to fit an abundance of striking horror into our 2023 programme, particularly in October, but few come close to the stylishness of Ana Lily Amirpour’s debut film.
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night follows the titular character as she preys on several bad men and develops a bond with one good man. She stalks the streets ‘Bad City’, a decaying Iran ghost town where everyone speaks Persian but which looks more like California. The figure of a hijabi, often rendered as a victim in orientalist western media, is here re-imagined as an avenging angel, using her thirst for blood as a way to strike back against misogyny.
With its heightened aesthetic, drawing on Spaghetti Westerns, German Expressionism and graphic novels, its alt-rock soundtrack and the central figure of a skateboarding vampire wearing a chador, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is one of the coolest, most unusual films on our 2023 programme.