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Fittingly, for a film that uses a brick factory as a microcosm of Iranian society, Ahmad Bahrami's beautifully shot feature is an exercise of careful construction, its initial looping structure and smooth, repetitive camera movements, building a hypnotic rhythm that draws us in.

Lotfollah (Ali Bagheri) has worked at this brick factory in the middle of nowhere as man and boy. The plant's isolated setting means that the workers also live there in a tight community. The story is driven by an announcement by the factory boss (Farrokh Nemati) that economic pressures are forcing him to close, with Bahrami returning again and again to his speech, which expands further each time, in between break-out snapshots examining the back stories of workforce faces in the crowd.

Lotfollah is the factory fixer, acting as a go-between for the others, each of whom has their own agenda - from the couple desperate...

Straying somewhat from the norms or recent Iranian productions, Ahmad Bahrami presents a rather interesting mix of documentary-like and dystopian movie, which won the Orizzonti Award Best Film in Venice and the Wild Dreamer as Subversive Film Festival

“The Wasteland” screened at Subversive Film Festival

The story takes place in a remote brick manufacture factory that produces bricks in the traditional way, with the workers being mostly families of different ethnicities. Ebrahim, an Azeri, wants to marry Gohar, an Iranian, in spite of her father Mashebad’s plans for her. Mashebad wants to take his family back to their hometown and marry Gohar off to an Iranian. There is Shahu, a Kurd, who draws the ire of Ebrahim by working around the factory’s women with just his tank top on. Shahu’s dad is on death row, and his family needs money to pay off the accusers. There is Sarvar,...