The Mirror

Young Mina is impatient: why hasn't her mother come to pick her up from school? The little girl – wearing her uniform, one arm in a cast – decides to make her own way home. Her navigation of Tehran’s frightening traffic is captured in raw, documentary-like images: an adventure in miniature. Along the way, Mina encounters a series of people, most of whom want to help direct her, while others are indifferent to her plight. Suddenly, the child actress protests against her role: she feels trapped in the wrong story. Still miked up, she struggles to get home for real. Just how much of this was staged is unclear – but the ‘mirroring’ of the film’s two halves raises many questions about the nature of both fiction and documentary.