Bicycleran

The wife of Nasim, an Afghan immigrant in Iran, is gravely ill. He needs money to pay for her care, but his day labor digging wells does not pay enough. A friend connects Nasim to a two-bit promoter who sells tickets to watch Nasim ride a bicycle continuously for a week.

What strikes me most about this film is not even the film itself, which has many good qualities. It is the world that is being filmed. With the Middle East constantly in the news, the region is a common focus of American movies. But seeing the people through the eyes of a director who lives there... it is a completely different experience.

One scholar has analyzed the film as an allegory which parallels the exploitation that Afghan refugees suffer from in Iran and from which they are unable to escape. I do not know enough to comment on this, though it is interesting to note that Mohsen Makhmalbaf, although Iranian, does seem to have a preoccupation with the Afghan people.