Iraqi Kurdistan, a remote village. A new sheriff comes to town. It is probably a very unexpected setting for a traditional Western, but Hiner Saleem makes it seem the most natural location in his Un Certain Regard entry My Sweet Pepper Land. Peppered (no pun intended) with humor, at times morbid, this conventional but utterly watchable tale of two outsiders finding each other in a close-knit community adds regional social commentary to a straightforward film to give it just that little extra.
Although Golshifteh Farahani as Govend is put front and center for all press materials for the film, actually Korkmaz Arslan as Baran is the slightly more leading character. A police officer from Erbil (the Kurdish capital since it became an autonomous region from Iraq in 2005) chooses to become the police commander in a small town in the 'Bermuda Triangle' of the border area between Iraq, Iran, and Turkey. On the last part of the trip, while on horseback, he meets Govend, a young elementary school teacher on her way to the same town. Upon arrival, both are regarded with suspicion by the townsfolk, certainly by local kingpin Aziz Aga (Tarik Akreyî) and his gang, who run the town and control smuggling in the surrounding mountains. Baran has come to lay down the law, and he is not easily cowed, even though the Aga gang tries to intimidate both him and the teacher. As the two grow closer together, rumors spread and soon the two are pitted against the rest of the town, with a confrontation with Aziz Aga and his band inevitable.
Director Hiner Saleem uses every Western trope known to man, right down to wide sunset shots, to create a sort of 'John Ford in the Middle East.' Some shots in the surrounding mountains are in fact right out of the John Ford playbook, as is the loner character of Baran. Add to that a soundtrack filled with Western motifs and Americana, and you have a film that could have been released by an American studio in the '50s.