Brick and Mirror (Ebrahim Golestan, 1964)

The cover of the original pressbook

Iranian cinema’s first true modern masterpiece, Brick and Mirror explores fear and responsibility in the wake of the CIA- and MI6-orchestrated 1953 coup. A Dostoyevskian tale of a Tehran cab driver’s search for the mother of an abandoned baby, it presents a harrowing image of a society rife with corrupted morals and widespread alienation. While rooted in a specific social context, its message resonates universally. The characters often speak without truly communicating, their soliloquies echoing unheard in the endless night they inhabit.

Golestan weaves this world together not only with his remarkable writing and direction but also with his own voice: first heard reciting a poem on the radio, warning of the dangers of the night; later, reciting the words of God from the Qur'an. Divinity and poetry meet in unlikely places—a smoky café, an empty bazaar, an orphanage. The title, alluding to a poem by Attar ("What the old can see in a mudbrick/youth can see in a mirror"), reflects the film’s fluid movement between realism and expressionism. It also marks the first creative use of direct sound in Iranian cinema (a detail heightened by the absence of a musical score), which complements the claustrophobic use of widescreen.