Her wheelchair-bound daughter, Aghdas, is left to mourn her in her large house (Moshir ad-Dowleh Mansion) alongside her mother's widower, Hadji Amoo, and his two nephews, Ramezan and Shaban.

He falls to the ground and Kanizak and Ramezan drag him to the cellar, where they store the body in a bottomless jar, intending to return later and dissolve it in nitric acid on Aghdas's orders.

Shocked, Aghdas is unable to respond, and Kanizak and Ramezan take the men down to the cellar, where they examine the jars without finding the body and then leave.

Taking an antique pistol from her drawer, Aghdas drags herself down the stairs to the basement, where she discovers Hadji Amoo and Kanizak in the bath.

In the final scene of the film, Kanizak departs the mansion, leaving behind only a young boy and Aghdas's elderly nanny.

Hossein Eidizadeh wrote in Lola Journal:From marvelous camera movements, to every tiny prop purposefully set in the corners of the frame.

A prolific documentarist who has made only two fiction films (the second, Green Fire [2008], was bashed by critics, which is hardly surprising), Aslani is a filmmaker who tells the most Iranian stories with the elegant technique of Ophüls or Visconti.

With the first dinner gathering of the family of the deceased mother (crippled daughter, her step father, her uncle, her maid), through mise en scène, the power dynamic of the story unfolds.

[7] The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD by The Criterion Collection in September 2022 as part of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project series.