Mehdi Shahabi

With his father in jail, probably for smuggling alcohol across the barbed-wire border, Behruz and his family are destitute. His love of birds and talent for imitating their songs land him the unhappy job of helping to capture them for a local bird merchant. He meets a girl his own age whose mother comes to Iran to sell clothes, but they leave before he has a chance to say goodbye. Qanbari sticks to images and the children’s plaintive faces, old before their time, to tell his story almost without words. Their delicate emotions are echoed in a local bridegroom’s illegal crossing into Azerbaijan for his own wedding.