The opening shot of this affecting drama about family and society in Iran sets the tone for what follows. It shows Tuba's face as she is about to be interviewed for TV with a group of women co-workers in a textile factory. As she prepares to speak, a voice tells her to adjust her head covering so that her hair is not showing. This small moment echoes the larger paradox of how being female further limits the already difficult struggle of being on the lower rungs economically. This very contemporary story of a family in Iran and the matriarch at its center, might be about any family in any large urban city, but for a few things that set it apart. The depiction of Tehran, with its sprawling freeways, modern skyscrapers and crowded housing, are all surprisingly familiar. In many ways much the same as any American city, the film captures a familial and societal structure where women are still cast as decidedly second class citizens. From a director considered to be the preeminent woman filmmaker of Iranian cinema, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, who's inclination is for documentaries, she blends the social issues she has explored in that milieu with a loosely woven narrative story that gets tighter as it progresses.

Tuba, a mother of four, toils in a textile factory where breathing the fibers has produced a chronic cough. Her lame husband stays at home while she provides the meager family income. With oldest son Abbas, Tuba's husband makes the decisions regarding money and possibly selling her home. Completing the family are a teen age daughter and son, and a married daughter who returns home, child in tow, again pregnant, after being beaten by her husband. Tuba's first reaction is to ask what she did to make him do that. Abbas is an affable young man who aspires to get high paying work abroad in order to marry and make a better life, but legal visas are not easy to get, and illegal ones are risky, as he finds out. Underneath Tuba's sometimes harsh exterior is a strong woman who loves her family who struggles to survive and protect her home.

The top grossing box office film of the year in Iran, it is being well received by audiences outside Iran, providing a unique and realistic vision of Iranian life and promoting a richer global understanding, which at its core testifies to the universal human experience. Visually notable for the way the director contrasts the interior spaces where people live and work to the vastness of the detached cityscape. Also fascinating and significant are the billowing black garments of the women and their polarity with the white wedding gowns being produced and exported by Abbas unsavory employer. The ordinary lives of this family move into the extraordinary with a dramatic turn of events through the dubious choices they are offered.