Famed actress Susan Taslimi plays three roles here: Kian, who doubts her identity; Vida, the twin sister, a self-assured artist; and their mother, who gives up one child out of fear of poverty, then deprives the other of affection due to deep regrets regarding the child whom she has abandoned.

Noted Iranian actress Susan Taslimi plays an impoverished single mother who agees to marry off her 13-year-old daughter to a middle-aged man in return for a mare, which will help her earn an income and provide for her younger children. Director Ali Zhekan paints a stark picture of poverty and patriarchy in rural Iran (the mother stores her rice in a container hidden in a tree; her brother, who brokered the wedding, mercilessly beats the recalcitrant child), but this 1986 film is distinguished mostly by Taslimi's increasingly fiery performance as the mother decides to defend her daughter's freedom.

Taraneh is a model 15-year-old Iranian girl, studious and filial, who supports her ailing grandmother with a job at a photo shop and visits her father (who has been imprisoned for reasons never made clear in the film) bearing gifts of cigarettes and magazines. But when Amir, a young man from a well-off family, sets his sights on Taraneh and courts her with an intensity that borders on stalking, her well-ordered life spirals into chaos.

A wood smuggler is arrested by the police. His family should pay the debts while he is in the prison.

On a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.

The story revolves around a blind boy named Mohammed who is released from his special school in Tehran for summer vacation. His father, shamed and burdened by Mohammed's blindness, arrives late to pick him up and then tries to convince the headmaster to keep Mohammed over the summer. The headmaster refuses, so Mohammed's father eventually takes him home.