This strange, beguiling story of a young man failing to come to terms with his father's death is told in a modest, original style that heralds an idiosyncratically personal voice for Iranian cinema. Against stark and beautiful images, an increasingly dark and laconic voiceover speaks of the unnamed protagonist's dead father (played by famed actor Ezzatolah Entezami) and obsessively revisits the father's love for Isfahan's river. Major life events occur—the narrator loses his job, gets married, moves to Tehran—but the narrator's attention remains with the memory of his father, who visits him in watery, waking dreams. Though the film's dreamlike style demands our attention, it never gets in the way of this very moving and precise depiction of the subterranean effects of a parent's death.

Based on the novel by Jafar Modaress Sadeghi.

Producer: Ali Moallem. Screenwriter: Behrooz Afkhami. Cinematographer: Mohammed Aladpoush. Editor: Behrooz Afkhami. Cast: Ezzatolah Entezami, Bahram Radan, Bahareh Rahnama, Soruch Sehhat. 35mm, 96 min.

Cost : In-person $7, students & seniors $5, www.cinema.ucla.edu $8

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Sponsor(s): UCLA Film and Television Archive, The Bijan Amin and Soraya Amin Foundation