Gabbeh

Gabbeh (1996) is an Iranian-French art film by director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and you can watch it online on iFILM. An elderly couple is washing a gabbeh — a traditional Persian rug — by the river. A young woman steps out of its woven patterns and begins to tell her own story.

She belongs to a nomadic tribe. Her father keeps promising to arrange her marriage to a horseman who trails the caravan, then postpones it again. Thread by thread she weaves the rug, and its designs hold everything she loves, everything she waits for.

Makhmalbaf shoots entirely in the open landscape with natural light, building a film that works through colour, movement and silence rather than plot. Quiet but hard to shake off. Stream Gabbeh (1996) online on iFILM.