“My daughters are like flowers. They may wither and die in the sun.” So explains the father who has locked away his twin eleven-year-old girls as prisoners in his home in a poor section of Tehran for their entire lives, presumably to protect them from the world, and especially the masculine eye. Concerned neighbors report the family to social services, who remove the neglected and uneducated girls but eventually return them to their pained father and resigned, blind mother. Based on a true story that sparked public controversy in Iran, eighteen-year-old Makhmalbaf’s first feature film combines news clips and dramatic sequences reenacted by the actual family to explore the ambiguous position of women in Iranian society.