This film, which is 75 minutes long in color and has hardly any spoken dialogues, is exceptional in its value. I watched this Iranian film in Farsi without English subtitles at the International Film Festival of Kerala, India, where it was being presented as part of an Early Iranian cinema retrospective. The fact that I was watching a print without subtitles did not matter, as there were very few lines of spoken dialogue.
The film is accessible to anyone who wants to enjoy it, as its story and values are not just Iranian but universal. It is set in rural Iran, where the setting is on the fringes of desert land, where water is scarce, rainfall scanty, and hardly any blade of grass is green. Add to this the wind and dust that buffets and whips man and animal, and you can imagine the plight of the people who live on the fringes of society.
The film is a moving tale of a young teenager returning to his village with a goat—only to find that his family and villagers have moved on to escape nature's vagaries, leaving only one old man behind. He gives the goat to him and goes in search of his family. Water is scarce and well water is treated with reverence and never wasted.
