"This slight, charming film is a Brief Encounter of the most repressed nature." (Edinburgh Film Festival) In his debut film, Payami, an Iranian living in Canada, takes an almost Bressonian approach to the daily routines of life in Tehran in telling of an enigmatic relationship between a man and a woman who meet every day at the same bus stop and take the same bus, facing each other across the barrier that segregates men and women. Gradually we learn that the man is an inmate at an open prison, illegally selling drugs from his job as a hospital janitor. He negotiates for just one more day before he must return to prison-his life has suddenly been made bearable by the presence of this woman he barely knows. People on the streets, on the bus, in the cafe are equally the protagonists. As critic Hassan Seraj Zahedi notes, "The repetitious scenes of daily encounters (are) fraught with details of extraordinary dramatic expressiveness."