Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s compelling portrait of contemporary filmmaking, made on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the cinema, began with an advertisement he placed in a Tehran paper to audition one hundred actors and actresses for a new film. Five thousand hopefuls arrive as the film opens, however, and a riot ensues. Makhmalbaf nonetheless manages to conduct a series of auditions, in which the would-be Iranian actors—intellectuals, students, young boys, and even women—reflect on their lives and on the importance of cinema in the culture. Makhmalbaf himself emerges as the grand provocateur of this collective meditation on the power of cinematic images.