Similar in theme and tone to last year's The Red Ribbon (Ebrahim Hatami-Kia), Ali Shah-Hatami's Shrapnels in Peace presents an apocalyptic vision of a postwar society where any semblance of social order and normal existence have ceased to exist. It is an allegorical account of a border town where the only occupation open to the residents is collecting scrap metal in mine-infested fields. The film is filled with powerful, surreal images of hell and dystopia: a woman carrying the broken wing of an airplane over her head in the desert, a legless old man collecting iron scraps and putting them in his wheelchair saddlebag, and charred palm orchards whose only harvest now is war rubble. Despite the absurdist, self-contained (almost Beckettian) depiction of the landscape, Shah-Hatami humanizes his characters with quiet and understated dramatic touches like the beautiful friendship between Jomeh and Aboud, two teenagers who live on an abandoned barge.