Dancing in the Dust

Nazar is a young man who married in a hurry. His family and the people around him force him to divorce his wife because of gossip about her mother. He divorces her, but the loan he took out for the wedding and the maintenance he owes Reyhaneh remain. When he falls behind on the payments he runs from the police and ends up in the desert alongside an old, silent man who catches snakes and sells their venom. This is Asghar Farhadi's first feature. The things you find in his later films are already here: a bind in which nobody is entirely in the wrong, the way moral pressure corners a person, and the difference between speaking and staying quiet. The desert section turns into something close to a two-hander. The film took the special jury prize at the Fajr Film Festival and was awarded in Moscow and Pusan as well.