Like many films made under immense restrictions in Iran, Hassan Yektapanah's warm, humane and sometimes witty directorial debut matches subtle means with great thematic scope.
Djomeh (Jalil Nazari) is a 20-year-old Afghan man working on a dairy farm in Iran. He's also smitten - - unfortunately for him - - with an Iranian girl in a village store. His ardour not much helped by conservative attitudes, Djomeh turns to the farm owner, Mahmoud (Mahmoud Behraznia), to press his love-sick case.
That's it plotwise, but Yektapanah's supple script finds riches in this simple premise. There's much talk of exile, friendship, loneliness, vocation, age, custom and cross-cultural longing, set against a vividly realised work-day bustle and played with deft economy - - the evocative use of sound even lends the off-screen mooing of cows a wry resonance. This small but lovely fable of fraught love is an object lesson in making a virtue of simplicity.
