Ali Reza Zarrin

The Key

Calamity by four-year old might be another title for this tense, humorous drama. In the story, a four year old boy (Mohammed Aladpoush) is left at home with his baby brother while his mother goes out shopping. She has told him to give the baby his bottle while she is away. However, the boy has a different idea about what he should do, and consumes most of the bottle himself. The hungry baby's cries arouse the neighbors to try and get into the apartment, but it is locked, and the four-year old can't (or, more likely, won't) let them in. Despite a number of near-disasters, the enterprising young boy manages things just well enough (with the occasional help of shouted advice from frantic neighbors) so that serious calamities are avoided.

The Jar

In the yard of an Iranian village school stands in the shade of a tree a large stoneware jar from which all the pupils drink fresh water. On an unfortunate day, the jar starts leaking. The schoolmaster tries hard to get a new one but in vain. The only solution is to have it fixed...

Life, and Nothing More…

After the earthquake of Guilan, a film director and his son travel to the devastated area to search for the actors from the movie the director made there a few years previously. In their search, they see how people who have lost everything in the earthquake still have hope and try to live life to the fullest.

Bashu, the Little Stranger

During the Iran-Iraq War, Bashu, a young boy loses his house and all his family. Scared, he sneaks into a truck that is leaving the area. He gets off the truck in the Northern part of the country, where everything from landscape to language is different. He meets Naii, who is trying to raise her two young children on a farm, while her husband is away. Despite cultural differences, and the fact that they do not speak the same language, Bashu and Naii slowly form a strong bond.

Close-Up

This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.

Homework

Young male students at a local Iranian school are asked about their feelings on homework.

Where Is The Friend's House?

An 8 year old boy must return his friend's notebook he took by mistake, lest his friend be punished by expulsion from school.

The Runner

A young orphan named Amiro lives alone in an abandoned tanker in the Iranian port city of Abadan. He survives by shining shoes, selling water, and collecting deposit bottles. Although he sometimes finds himself at odds with both adults and competing older kids, he finds solace in dreams about departing cargo ships and airplanes—and by running.