The Glass Agency

Haj Kazem commanded men in the Iran-Iraq War. A piece of shrapnel still inside his old comrade Abbas is about to kill him, and the operation can only be done abroad. Kazem goes from door to door, cannot raise the money, cannot get a ticket. In the end he walks into a travel agency with a gun and takes everyone inside hostage. Ebrahim Hatamikia wrote and directed the film, one of the most argued over productions of post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. It is about what the men who went to the war found when they came back: forgotten veterans, a bureaucracy that does not work, and people who use the war for their own politics. The film drew praise from conservative and reformist circles alike. Parviz Parastui plays Kazem; it won the directing and screenplay awards at the 1998 Fajr festival.