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In Baran, an Iranian
teenager has his view of the world changed dramatically when he
falls in love with an Afghan woman.
The film tells a touching,
romantic story, but the underpinnings of Baran -- Rain
-- are mostly political and mostly heart-breaking. And entirely
contemporary.
Lateef (Hossein Abedini) is
a mouthy kid working on a construction site in Iran. His job is to
make tea and work as a general caretaker to the workers. Many of
them are Afghans; they are among the millions in Iran who have fled
war and internal strife in Afghanistan.
After an Afghan worker is
injured, his place at the construction site is taken by his own
adolescent son, Rahmat (Zahra Bahrami). A series of incidents cause
Rahmat and Lateef to be enemies, but one day Lateef finds out what
the audience already knows, which is that under the bulky clothes
and the head scarves and everything else, Rahmat is actually a young
woman. Her name is Baran. She has taken on this job so her family
does not starve. Lateef is smitten.
The rest of the film
outlines Lateef's intense desire to help Baran and her family and
the risky business he gets into to offer that help. Love erases the
lines drawn between countries and cultures.
Baran manages to quietly
slip its political messages just under the narrative -- here is the
way Afghan workers are treated in Iran, here is the status of women,
here, the attitude toward those who cannot produce proper I.D., and
over here, the living arrangements for the disenfranchised.
The strict censorship codes
for film in place in Iran since about 1979 means that Baran,
typically, is a film made almost in code. Children are at the centre
of many Iranian movies to 'disguise' political themes and get past
the censors. Women can only be depicted in certain ways and must be
viewed to be following Islamic dress codes.
In Baran, all of the roles
are taken by non-professionals. The young woman who plays Baran grew
up in Afghan refugee camps in Iran and was living in Torbat Jaam
when the filmmakers discovered her.
Baran, which has English
subtitles, is the fourth of Majid Majidi's films to win Best Film at
the Fajr Film Festival. It also won the Grand Prize of the Americas
at the Montreal Film Festival.