Why you can trust 12DOVE
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.
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