Reza Jalali

An investigation of government censorship in Iran.

Squatters live on a mothballed oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. The children attend a school on board; men harvest scrap metal and old oil in the hull; women keep house and raise children and Captain Nemat runs it all with an iron hand. We follow a lad who rescues fish trapped in the hull, an old man who stares at the sun, the idealistic teacher, and Ahmad, the Captain's assistant who has fallen in love with a young woman whose father wants to marry her to someone of means. What future has this sinking city?

Alireza Shalikaran is serving time in prison for theft. He is a troublesome figure, trying as he does to escape from the prison and committing acts of violence. A handful he may be, but he finds a caring figure in the prison warden. The warden puts forward the case that Alireza might settle down when he finds a wife. Yet how is Alireza to find a wife when he is enclosed within the prison walls? The task of finding a marriage partner falls to Alireza's mother, who is also in prison. She comes across a young woman, who, though incarcerated for drug-related offences, is respectable. Will the match work? An interesting look at the limits of prison life.

Mukarrama is an old woman in one of the villages of Mazandaran who cannot read or write and suddenly turns to painting. In his memoirs and dreams, he depicts the relationship between a man and a woman, master and servant, man and God in a special style.

A Khorasani saffron grower struggles to fertilize the saffron plant with dehydration and the risk of losing the dull flowers of the saffron in order to obtain the flower stigma or saffron root.