Director: Abbas Kiarostami.
Iran. 1990. A film director is driving with his son, Puya, from Tehran towards Rudbar into a region hit by an earthquake. The director wants to find out if a small boy, Babek Ahmed Poor who was the lead actor in the film Where is the Friend's Home? Has survived the quake. Puya suggests that Babek may be safe if he left his house to watch a World Cup soccer match on television that night.
They emerge from a tunnel into the devastated area. During a brief stop, the director finds an unattended baby crying in some woods. When the mother returns, he leaves. The director's car becomes stuck in a traffic jam and he decides to try a side road in an effort to reach Babek's home town of Koker. He drives a heavy gas cylinder up a hill for an elderly woman. He asks directions of another woman who says she has lost 16 people in the disaster. When one road disappears into a crevasse, they take another towards Posteh, meeting a man who recognises the boy on the poster as the "son of Abdullah of Koker." The man has no news of him and refuses a lift.
They pass a Mr Rouhi and offer him a lift. He reminds the director that he too was in Where is the Friend's Home? And had to wear a false hump. They stop at a house which has escaped destruction, where Mr Rouhi has found refuge because the owner died in the quake while visiting relatives. The director gets out to chat while Puya goes exploring. He retrieves a kettle for an elderly woman - she has had no tea for three days. A younger woman tells Puya she lost her eldest child and blames God. Puya insists it was not God but the earthquake and reminds her that God wouldn't let Abraham sacrifice his son. A young man dressed in his best clothes tells the director how he and his fiancée have forgone the usual waiting period and got married the day after the earthquake, having lost as many as 60 to 65 relatives.
Driving on they meet a boy who was in Where is the Friend's Home?, Mohammed. They give him a lift to a campsite and he describes how he saw his house come tumbling down, killing his uncle. At the site, the survivors are erecting a television aerial in order to watch the next World Cup game. Brazil versus Argentina. The director meets two young girls washing clothes in a stream. One of them is Mohammed's sister, who survived being crushed by her house because a girder became lodged just above her. Puya wants to stay with the survivors and watch the match while his father drives the few remaining miles to Koker. The director agrees.
He stops to question a man erecting the aerial about the propriety of watching football amidst so much mourning. The man says that the World Cup occurs only once every four years and an earthquake comes every 40 years - the opportunity is not to be missed. He also claims to have just seen "Abdullah of Koker's son" carrying an oil heater. The father drives on and comes across two boys with a heater. One of them had a tiny part in Where is the Friend's Home? But neither is Babek Ahmed Poor. After he drops the boys off, the director is warned to take the hill ahead at full throttle or he'll not make it. Having managed the first of several steep zig zags, he stalls at the top of the second and the car slides back down. A man (possibly the one who refused the lift much earlier) gives him a push start. We watch the man slowly climb the hill until the car comes back into view behind him, this time taking the second corner and stopping just above to let the man in. - Nick James, Sight & Sound
