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In Southern Iran, in the province of Khuzestan, in a stark and mineral landscape, a woman breaks rocks off a cliff, using only the strength of her arms and a crowbar as a tool. She lives there, in a hut made of stones dug out of the rock. Her day-to-day life is divided between the care she provides to her husband and the long hours spent extracting stones.
Like Sisyphus, she seems doomed to live eternally the same daily routine. Day after day, shot after shot, her gestures are the same. Her living space, built around this extremely rudimentary home, is enclosed there where the barren landscape seems limitless. The camera that films the surroundings in slightly low-angle highlights the confinement of her situation. She thus appears condemned to the punitive task of deadening work whose meaning is only revealed to us at the end of the film. The absurdity of this woman’s destiny asks questions, like that of the meaning of life.
The film was awarded Best Short Film at the Cinéma Vérité Festival in Tehran.
