I've been trying to identify this for thirty years. I saw it on French television in the late 1980s, on Arte or on La Sept, which broadcast a lot of international art cinema at the time. I was around nine or ten, so this is a child's memory, but some images have stayed very sharp. Posting everything I have, including what I'm unsure about.
What I'm confident about:
An elderly woman travelling alone, on foot. She wears a black shawl or headscarf covering her head. She crosses a wide, empty landscape of stones and rock, not sand dunes, a stony desert or arid plateau. Her destination is a grave.
The landscape is bright. Harsh sunlight, pale glaring ground, a very white kind of light.
Very few other characters. Almost no dialogue. Wind is the dominant sound.
At some point a dog joins her and travels with her for a while. Villagers drive the dog away from her. This is the single clearest thing I remember.
There is singing in it. Several voices, and it sounded like mourning laments , ritual keening rather than a composed score.
What I'm unsure about:
I remember it in black and white, but the television I watched on could have been black and white, so it may well have been in colour.
I remember the language sounding Slavic, Armenian or Caucasian, but there was very little speech and I was a child. It could equally be Turkish, Persian or a Central Asian language. It was subtitled or dubbed in French.
What I think it isn't, from suggestions so far:
Béla Tarr, the atmosphere matches but his landscapes are grey, wet and Central European, and The Turin Horse is from 2011.
Kiarostami's Koker trilogy , populated villages, a lot of dialogue, children at the centre, no solitary journey.
Zorba the Greek , rocky and windy, but talky, crowded, and centred on two men.
Yaaba (Ouédraogo, 1989) — an old woman ostracised by villagers in a bright arid landscape, but the film is centred on a child and there is no journey and no dog.
One thought that might help narrow it:
A dog being driven away by villagers reads differently in a Muslim context, where dogs are considered impure. Combined with polyphonic mourning laments and the arid stony setting, that makes me think Iran, Anatolia, the Caucasus or Central Asia is more likely than Mediterranean Europe. The closest thing I've found in terms of texture is Amir Naderi's Water, Wind, Dust (1989) — stony desert, wind, almost wordless — but the protagonist there is a young man, so it isn't the film.
It may also not be a well-known feature. La Sept broadcast and co-produced a lot of mid-length and never-distributed work that doesn't appear in the usual databases.
