امین
Directed by Shahin Parhami • 2011 • Iran
Amin is the story of an ancient musical tradition and one man’s struggle to preserve it. It is told using a unique approach to documentary storytelling that challenges the boundaries of fiction and reality. Amin Aghaie is a young modern nomad from the south of Iran. He has dedicated his life to preserving, documenting and teaching the unique musical tradition of his people, the Qashqai, a tradition on the verge of extinction. Despite the fact that Amin’s family face steep financial, cultural and political obstacles, they are devoted to their art and culture and express that by supporting the work of their talented musician son. Every summer, Amin travels to remote towns and villages to record the music of the surviving masters whose numbers decline each year. His nomadic family are selling their meager belongings to help support their son’s education in performance and ethnomusicology at Tchaikovsky’s Conservatory in Kiev, Ukraine, but it is not enough. Amin, desperate to finish his academic education, sells his violins one at a time just to pay for his tuition.