Maziar Miri's feature debut is an unflinching and bold treatment of a sensitive political issue, the silencing of women's voices in Iran. Farhad, a single-minded and determined ethnomusicologist, is on a mission to recuperate and preserve the gradually forgotten folk songs of women in Khorasan. Armed with a portable tape recorder, he goes from village to village, trying to convince the local musicians to perform local women's lullabies, celebration and mourning songs, meeting resistance every step of the way. Haunted by the memory of a melody, he is looking for a legendary local female singer, Hayran (Ghogha Bayat, in a moving performance). When his persistence pays off, the story takes a surprising twist and Farhad's own past comes to play a major role in his attempts to convince Hayran to be recorded. Ironically, the film's soundtrack is performed by the well-known Iranian female singer and ethnomusicologist, Sima Bina, marking the maddening cultural complexity and class biases in legal codes which allow Bina's voice to be recorded for the film, but persecute authentic folk singers who are female for doing the same thing.