It's amazing how Iran manages to provide us with a stream of quality films, despite constant censorship and cultural brow-beating.
We are already familiar with the work of Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf and Panani, but Rafi Pitts, though this is his third film, is a new name to conjure with.
His spare, almost minimalist view of a snowy, freezing industrial suburb of Teheran is immediately striking, and his sparsely written story has an almost poetic momentum.
It begins when Mokhar, an impoverished husband and father, loses his job and so travels abroad in search of employment. He seems to blame his wife, Khatoun, for his misfortunes.
It ends with him returning penniless and suicidal. But during his absence, the ne'er-do-well Marhab arrives in Teheran seeking work and gradually insinuates his way into the affections of Khatoun. Since her husband is now presumed dead, a marriage is sanctioned.
Neither Mokhar nor Marhab are admirable men. Marhab is an arrogant drifter, who vandalises a car plant where he has been refused work. It also looks as if he might leave his new wife in the lurch. Mokhar is simply a hopeless case.
Slowly but surely, Pitts paints his canvas, in a way which makes what could have been a boring movie a genuinely moving one. A substantial criticism of a deadened society, It's Winter is subversively severe on Iranian men, and shows a place riven with desperation and poverty. But, more than that, it's a quiet but beautifully orchestrated piece of cinema.
It's Winter
Cert: 12A
