(Hamshahri). An endless array of bossy citizens bombard a poor traffic policeman with the exact excuses and reasons why they (but no one else) should be allowed into a certain area in Kiarostami's satiric document of humanity's seemingly endless capacity for lying through its teeth—that is, telling stories. Kiarostami uses a telephoto lens to eavesdrop on the action, fashioning out of one traffic panic an experimental, Warholian example (culled from nearly eighteen hours of continuous footage) of verbal invention, miniature rebellion, and the fine line between order and disorder.

• Written by Kiarostami. Photographed by Firouz Malekzadeh. (52 mins, 16mm)

Preceded by shorts:
Orderly or Disorderly (Be tartib va bedoun-e tartib) (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1981). Demonstrations of how to behave properly in real-life scenarios. Whether organized or chaotic, the situations are hard to capture on film: reality and cinema at odds. (16 mins, 16mm)
The Chorus (Hamsarayan) (Abbas Kiarostami, Iran, 1982). An elderly man drifts in and out of the clamor of daily life, with help from his hearing aid. (17 mins, 35mm)

• (Total running time: 85 mins, In Farsi with English electronic subtitles, Color, From Kanoon)