ahman Ghobadi's A Time for Drunken Horses evokes the Herculean realities of a group of Kurdish children saddled with adult responsibilities, hoping to carve a niche for themselves in an Iranian pecking order as smugglers and thieves. Ghobadi's brave feature is not only a testament to the harsh reality children in this part of the world live everyday but it's also remarkably free of pretenses. A pack of orphaned children must raise the money to finance an operation for their disabled brother Madi, who will die in 10 days if left untreated. Ghobadi could have fallen into any number of neo-realist traps. Though A Time for Drunken Horses may be grueling to a fault, Ghobadi avoids the rank sentimentality of some of Majid Majidi's films. Its structural flaws are almost irrelevant because the film substitutes as documentary. As a humanist statement, there's nothing out there like this little gem.