As the bombs fall in Kabul, a woman confides in her husband, who lies wounded by a bullet.

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Wounded by a bullet in the neck after a stupid dispute, a war hero lies unconscious at home. Due to increasingly frequent incoming attacks from the enemy family and friends have run away, but his wife (Golshifteh Farahani, extraordinarily expressive) has stayed home to take care of him. As she does so, she keeps up a monologue of her disappointed expectations, her bruised sentiments and finally her most intimate secrets. As she speaks, she slowly frees herself from her position of suffering wife and reclaims her body. “If you wake up, will you smile at me?” she asks him. “Will you kiss me, will you make love to me as I hope you will?” The suspense and tension swells.

Filmmaker and writer Atiq Rahimi adapted this film from her own novel of the same name (Prix Goncourt 2008), in collaboration with Jean-Claude Carrière. What could have been a talkative movie is instead a captivating story of the inalienable autonomy of all human beings regardless of their sex, race or religion. The photography is magnificent (interiors bathed in blue light, exteriors of intense brightness). In this way, form and background combine for a powerful work, which calls for a change of mentality in Muslim countries.