This partly autobiographical first feature by Mohamad Malas (see also The Night, February 27) is both an outstanding film teeming with life in the "street film" vein, and a portrait of a crucial time in Syrian history, the 1950s and early 1960s. Upon the death of his father, young Dib moves with his mother and brother to the security of his grandfather's home in Damascus. But what Dib sees is tumult in the streets, brutality in the home. "Mr. Malas flouts the politically correct image of the virtuous poor to describe the often emotionally crippling effect, especially on women, of the idealized Arab family's embrace." (Judith Miller, N.Y. Times) During this boy's life, the Middle East itself is a mixture of unrest and expectation: a military dictatorship falls, the Suez Canal is nationalized, Arab unity is seemingly within reach, war with Israel breaks out. The people obliquely but definitively take it all in, amidst myriad other concerns of the heart.