Water, Wind, Dust

Naderi made this for Iranian TV right after The Runner, and it plays like an expressionist twin to the earlier film. A boy searches for his missing parents in a huge, parched desert while the last inhabitants of the region flee as refugees and the sandstorms rise. There's no plot to speak of, but the boy faces a crisis of conscience when he finds himself responsible for an abandoned baby. There's hardly any dialogue either, just harsh, elemental imagery and a grim vision of life at the point of extinction. The slightly misjudged ending (which involves a burst of Beethoven on the soundtrack) confirms that allegorical interpretations are there for the asking.