How Long Is “Baran”?

Following up on his masterfully told art house successes The Children of Heaven and The Color of Paradise, Majid Majidi directs this quietly affecting tale about illegal Afghan immigrants living and working in Iran. The film centers on Latif (Hossein Abedini), a young Iranian man who buys provisions and makes (awful) tea for the workers of a construction site. At the film's outset, an Afghan worker named Najaf falls from the second story and breaks his leg. A widower with five children to feed, Najaf is in dire financial straits. He sends his teenaged son Rahmat to the site under the care of family friend Solan. The teenager proves to be a lousy worker but a whiz at making tea. After one mistake too many, Memar -- the foreman -- has Latif hauling bags of plaster and puts Rahmat on tea detail -- a task which the lad proves to be quite a talent in. Rahmat also paints the kitchen, changes the curtains, and makes other rather unusual changes to the normally rough-and-tumble construction site. Soon everyone, save the resentful Latif, is eating lunch at an actual table bedecked with a tablecloth. Latif's anger and jealousy evaporates, however, once he makes a surprising discovery. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto and AFI Film Festivals.