Still Life

This measured study of social alienation was influential Iranian director Sohrab Shahid Saless's second feature. It earned him both the Silver Bear at the Berlin film festival and the enmity of the Shah that forced him into German exile. The superficially simple drama focuses on a veteran railwayman who is discarded in the interests of progress after uncomplainingly doing his monotonous job in near isolation for 30 years. By presenting the daily routines of Zadour Bonyadi and his carpet-weaving wife in such unfussy detail, Saless speaks volumes about the irrelevance of the individual to Iranian industrialisation.