''The Mirror'' ( fa, آینه Ayneh) is a 1997 Iranian film directed by

Jafar Panahi Jafar Panâhi ( fa, جعفر پناهی, ; born 11 July 1960) is an Iranian film director, screenwriter, and film editor, commonly associated with the Iranian New Wave film movement. After several years of making short films and working as an ass ...

, about a little girl trying to find her way home from school.

Plot

Mina, a first-grader, finds her mother has failed to pick her up from school. The movie is about her endeavor to find her way home amidst the noise, confusion and chaos of

Tehran Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...

. Mina is dressed in school uniform (with a

head scarf A headscarf is a scarf covering most or all of the top of a person's, usually women's, hair and head, leaving the face uncovered. A headscarf is formed of a triangular cloth or a square cloth folded into a triangle, with which the head is cov ...

), has one arm in a cast and is holding a school bag in the other. She meets a lot of people on her way and most of them try to help her while others are surprisingly apathetic to her situation. Eventually, the movie takes a turn when the girl looks into the camera for the first time, breaking the

fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...

, and someone shouts from off-screen, "Mina, don't look into the camera!" The movie is a real-life capture of events thereon (or that is how it seems). Mina announces that she doesn't want to act in the movie any more and wants to go home. In the end she goes home after returning the microphone.

Meaning

In a 2006 interview, Panahi said that the film was meant to show how "reality and the imagination are intertwined, they are very similar". Also he mentioned about how the film is staged in a way which normally nobody would suspect was drama but would instead believe was real.

Cast

* Mina Mohammad Khani — Mina * Kazem Mojdehi * Naser Omuni * M. Shirzad * T. Samadpour

Accolades

References

External links

* 1997 films 1997 drama films Iranian drama films 1990s Persian-language films Films directed by Jafar Panahi Golden Leopard winners {{Iran-film-stub