The Night Bus

The Night Bus (Persian: اتوبوس شب; Transliteration: Otobus-e Shab) is a 2007 Iranian film directed by Kiumars Pourahmad. The film, which is in sharp monochrome, relates the story of a twenty-four-hour-long journey of two young Iranian soldiers (Issā and Emād) and a civilian driver (Amu Rahim) transporting thirty-eight Iraqi prisoners of war, taken from behind the Iraqi line, to a garrison inside Iran. From the details one is informed that the Iran–Iraq War has entered into its third year. The film masterfully depicts the deep inhumanity of acts of war amongst nations by showing the shared humanity of the combatants on both sides. Some scenes of the above-mentioned garrison are reminiscent of those of the 1965 British film The Hill. In the film, the Iranian characters speak Persian amongst themselves, with a variety of regional accents — emphasising the national character of the war effort, but broken Arabic, comprehensible to a Persian-speaking person, when addressing the Iraqi prisoners. The Arabic dialogues of the film, by the prisoners, are accompanied by Persian subtitles.