Rahbar Ghanbari

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.

A top student in a nomad's winter place, Aslan misses his chance to attend final exams due to the problems his father's dealing with. Now he has to study while leading the herds as a shepherd. But in the first place, he is obliged to teach something of life to an elder shepherd who has fallen for his big sister; to teach him to be a worthy man to love his sister.