In depicting the lives of Afghan refugees in Iran, Baran “plunges you into a reality that is, more often than not, difficult and sad, and then, without sentimentalizing it or denying its brutality, transforms that reality into a lyrical and celebratory vision. (The film's) hero is a young laborer named Latif, who fetches groceries and serves tea at a construction site where many of the laborers are Afghan émigrés working illegally. After one is injured, his son arrives to take his place....Before long...Latif discovers that the new boy is actually a girl named Baran, and he commences an awkward, earnest courtship....The lovely clarity of this story, which seems to have been drawn from the literature of an earlier age, is well served by the artful subtlety of the telling. (Director) Majidi prefers imagery to exposition, and his shots are as dense with meaning, and as readily accessible, as Dutch paintings.”