Squatters, mostly Arabs in Persia, live on a mothballed oil tanker in the Persian Gulf. The children attend a school on board; men harvest scrap metal and old oil in the hull; women keep house and raise children. Captain Nemat runs things with an iron hand, orienting new residents, keeping the books, negotiating with new buyers who may want to scrap the ship, arranging things, keeping discipline. We follow a lad who rescues fish trapped in the hull, an old man who stares at the sun, the idealistic teacher, and Ahmad, the Captain’s assistant who has fallen in love with a young woman whose father wants to marry her to someone of means. What future has this sinking city? –IMDb
Mohammad Rasoulof is an Iranian independent filmmaker. He was born in Shiraz in 1973. He studied sociology at Shiraz University, and film editing at Sooreh Higher Education Institute in Tehran.
His first feature-length film, The Twilight, was released in 2002. His second feature, Iron Island (film), was released in 2005. His most recent feature, The White Meadows, was released in 2009.
On December 20, 2010, he was sentenced by the government of Iran to six years in prison on charges of “assembly, collusion, and propagandizing against the regime.” -Wikipedia
