WAITING

In southern Iran, a fourteen-year-old boy is sent each day to fetch ice from a neighbor’s house, where a girl hands it to him through a doorway—only her hennaed hand ever visible. Soon, he becomes quietly consumed with the desire to glimpse her face.

Longing builds quietly through this hypnotic short, which charts the routine of a young boy bewitched by beauty. In Amir Naderi’s assured hands, light, color, and texture take on majestic significance, forming an exquisite cinematic language that spells out the swooning agony of yearning.