Written, directed and edited by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who has lived in exile for over a decade in London, this is about a burly film actor, Akbar, who wants to act only in ‘serious’ art films – but he is forced by his family’s economic demands to take part in a string of trashy commercial movies. After having made up his mind never to act in such fare, however lucrative, he finds out that his wife, Simin, wants to have a child. The tormented Simin, infertile and obsessed with having a baby, insists that her husband marry and impregnate a second wife, a deaf-mute Gypsy, to provide them with a child.