A Few Cubic Meters of Love

Description

Amid a cluster of corrugated-metal shacks in a desolate industrial suburb of Tehran, love blooms between a young Afghan émigrée and an Iranian metal-punch worker. Teenagers Marona (non-professional Hassiba Ebrahimi) and Saber (Sahed Soeili) are careful to keep their relationship clandestine, slipping away from their daily responsibilities to share joyful minutes of companionship in an abandoned shipping container. Like young couples all over the world from time immemorial, Saber and Marona have become convinced by their happiness that the world will bend and align with their impossible dreams. Indeed, the neorealist setting of Afghanistan’s official submission for the Foreign Language Oscar is more beautiful than bleak when viewed from the right angle. However, Marona belongs to a group of Afghan refugees without work permits or ID cards who are routinely subjected to the humiliations of being paid half the wages of Iranians and raided and chased by the police. The dignity that these displaced people persevere to preserve—none more so than Marona’s father—is poignantly evoked by a cast made up largely of factory workers. A few cubic meters are all they have. —Michael Fox

Trailer

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Film Details