That Night’s Train

The 5-year-old Banafsheh and her grandmother are on the night train home. They were visiting Banafsheh’s mother’s grave, who passed away when she was but a baby. On the train, they meet a teacher who is on her way to the village where she teaches a couple of days a week. The teacher and Banafsheh immediately hit it off and the teacher promises the girl to call to meet up some time. From that moment on, Banafsheh never leaves the telephone. The promised phone call however does not come and Banafsheh is starting to lose hope.

In a second storyline we see the teacher in front of her class. She tries to fine-tune the story for her book together with her students. The teacher as it happens is also a writer and she has writer’s block. She does not know how to write the ending to her story. Her book is about a young girl who grasps onto a teacher after she had lost her mother…

You guessed it: the divide between the two stories in this film, based on the book of the same name by Ahmad Akbarpour, is rather vague. The ending also changes every time the students rearrange the puzzle pieces. Maybe not the easiest film for a young audience, but definitely one to watch with the whole family and try to figure out together.