بمانی (2002)

This is the story of three loves: three young women’s love of life, shattered by social ills and driven to the brink of death. Delaram (Madineh) Saber is a young woman from an Arab family who has separated from her addicted husband. She lives with her grandmother and works as a carpet weaver. A young man nearing the end of his military service meets Delaram while arranging for a small rug to be woven for his mother, and falls in love with her. They agree that after he completes his service, his mother will come to ask for her hand in marriage. But their meetings lead Delaram’s fanatical brothers to behead her, accusing her of immorality and prostitution. The second girl, Nasim Pouyan, is a first-year medical student. Because of her father’s fanaticism and rigid beliefs, she pretends to be studying medical laboratory sciences. But her father finds out the truth. Believing hospitals to be places of corruption and not wanting his daughter to spend the night alone there with doctors, he pulls Nasim out of university and locks her in the basement of their home. In utter desperation, Nasim sets herself on fire. The third girl is Bamani. Bamani Habibian is a high-school student from a large, poor family. Her father, a municipal street sweeper, decides to marry her off to their landlord, a wealthy old man called Khalu, in exchange for three years’ rent. Bamani resists, runs away, and takes refuge in the home of one of her relatives. But her father brings her back, and eventually the wedding takes place between the teenage girl and the wealthy old man, even though her heart belongs to a young shepherd who dreams of going to the city to make a better life for himself. Once, when Bamani had spoken to her father about the young shepherd, he beat her severely. Bamani’s only role in the old man’s house is to serve her master. But after a while she rebels: she strikes Khalu on the head with a stick, flees his house, and returns to her parents’ home, where she pours kerosene over herself and sets herself on fire. With her body, face, and spirit burned, Bamani obtains a divorce from Khalu. This time she does not go to her father’s house; instead, she wanders until she reaches a cemetery. There she meets a young corpse washer who lives on the cemetery’s outskirts, and the two decide to live together there.