Three Little dreams
A Franco-Tadjik production, an Iranian tale
While in Doshan, a small town in north-eastern Iran, people are preparing to receive Ayatollah, an influential religious dignitary who is coming from the capital, three children, Bâbak, Latif and Jâvid, who work in a bakery, tell each other the dreams they had the night before. They find out that all three witnessed the same event: the murder of the painter Abbâs, by the pasdar, the local head of the revolutionary guard. Each dream, as a piece of a puzzle, unfolds a part of the story and reveals the circumstances that, in their imagination, successively led to Abbâs’s death.
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One of the dreams shows Rassoul, a young man carrying a bottle of poison and revealing his intention of using it to punish those he considers « the bastards in this world ». In other fragments, we see people gathered around Abbâs’s body in front of a grocery. He has been killed point-blank by the pasdar after an argument during which Abbâs took the side of the grocer who had been brutally bullied by the pasdar. Finally, a last dream depicts Ayatollah who, after Abbâs’ murder, organizes a parody of trial. He declares that the victim is a « perverted » artist, lacking morals, and that after all, it is only fair that this man should be dead...
While the three children share their secrets in the bakery, far away from the outside tumult, cries and laments break out: the announcement is made that Ayatollah has been poisoned.
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This story is set in between dream and reality. Through their imagination and subconscious, the children reveal the restraints placed upon them by society, the arbitrariness of justice and the religious oppression in Iranian society.