What is The Origin of “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”? Is it Actually Iranian Cinema?
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) is regularly billed as “The first Iranian vampire spaghetti western,” but it’s not technically Iranian cinema. The film’s writer and director, Ana Lily Amirpour, is of Iranian descent, though she never actually lived in Iran. The film features an all-Iranian cast and is entirely in Farsi, but the entire film was shot against clearly identifiable landscapes of the American west in California, primarily in the small vintage town of Taft. Its characters, plot, and narrative demonstrate a cross-cultural range of references from many cultures.
The film, therefore, is a fusion of Iranian and American cultural cinema.