The lives of shepherd children in Afghanistan are governed by a labyrinth of traditions and rules. Sediqa is treated warily by the other children, who believe she’s cursed. She finds common cause with an outsider, Qodrat, a boy who’s also become an outcast after his mother remarried.

A prizewinner at the Cannes Quinzaine, this breakthrough film from Shahrbanoo Sadat (The Orphanage) is an ambitious and highly distinctive film fable, both an ethnographic, observational docudrama and a spellbinding, semi-autobiographical story of childhood in rural Afghanistan.