Baran

Baran (2001) is Majid Majidi's quiet Iranian drama, available to watch online on iFILM. On a Tehran construction site, seventeen-year-old Lateef — hot-headed and careless — finds himself unaccountably shaken by a soft-spoken Afghan laborer named Rahmat.

The site runs on undocumented workers from Afghanistan, underpaid and kept out of sight whenever inspectors come around. When Lateef is bumped from his easy job to make room for the newcomer, his first reaction is spite. But something gentler grows underneath the resentment, and Rahmat is hiding a secret that will turn Lateef's small world upside down. For the first time, the boy starts living for someone other than himself.

Majidi tells almost all of it without dialogue — through glances, rain, churned mud, and small acts of care. It's slow, chaste, and deeply felt, a love story about giving up your own identity for another person. The film took the Grand Prix at the Montreal World Film Festival and cemented Majidi as one of Iranian cinema's great humanists. Stream Baran online on iFILM.