Synopsis

For young Ali, simply experiencing childhood as a spectator isn't enough: he wants to participate and learn. In Reza Pahlavi's Tehran, amid checkpoints, secret police, and the burning of banned books, Ali seeks first and foremost to understand the fundamental facts of life. How are children born? At what exact moment does spring begin? For each of these questions, Ali develops answers as bizarre as they are brilliant. But then his older brother, Puyan, is arrested, and from that moment, silence reigns in Ali's home. History and politics enter his little universe, shattering the enchantment of his early years, but not entirely the irony of Ali's gaze, which continues to record and transfigure events: Tehran rapidly sliding toward the Khomeini Revolution and, after the great dream, from one dictatorship to another. A story ancient and current, local and universal, which tells of the budding of an identity, of taking root in loved ones and places, of uprooting and exile.