Co-directed by Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, and her long-time collaborator Mohsen Abdolvahab, this is a tale of a mother whose hopes for a bright future for her two children are forever dashed by the horrors of war. 

Before the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988), a concerned mother, Gilaneh, watches helplessly as her only son, Ismael, engaged to be married, marches off to war. Her pregnant daughter, Maygol (played by Baran Kosari, Bani-Etemad’s own daughter), vows to leave the relative calm of their village for the war-torn Iranian capital to search for her husband, who has deserted his post. 

In 2003, fifteen years later, during the American invasion of Iraq, we find Gilaneh taking care of her bedridden son, who suffers from the effects of chemical warfare. The weary mother lovingly tends to her ravaged son’s lingering war wounds despite a local doctor’s repeated pleas to move Ismael to a veterans’ hospital. This emotionally compelling film is about hardship, love and a mother’s courage in times of war.