Going By chronicles a day in the lives of four carloads of characters traveling on the same road from Tehran to the Caspian Sea in the north. Although strangers to one another, the passengers of each vehicle are preoccupied by issues surrounding death—a metaphor that opens the conventions of the road movie to deeper considerations. In an apparent nod to Kiarostami (the subject of a book—the first in Farsi—by this mechanical engineer and critic turned director), the road is employed as a device for meditating the larger issues of life.