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The story begins by showcasing the close relationship between a middle-aged Iranian villager Masht Hassan and his beloved cow. Hassan is married but has no children. His only valuable property is a cow that he cherishes as the only cow in the village. When Hassan leaves the village for a short time, the pregnant cow is found dead in the barn. Hassan‘s fellow villagers fear his reaction and cover up the evidence of the death and tell him upon his return that his cow has run away. Finding great difficulty confronting the loss of his beloved cow, as well as the loss of livestock that affects his social stature at the village.
Dariush Mehrjui, born on 8 December 1939 in Tehran, is an Iranian director, screenwriter, producer, film editor and a member of the Iranian Academy of the Arts. Mehrjui was a founding member of the Iranian New Wave movement of the early 1970s. His second film, Gaav, is considered to be the first film of this movement, which also included Masoud Kimiai and Nasser Taqvai. Most of his films are inspired by literature and adapted from Iranian and foreign novels and plays. Modern Iranian cinema begins with Dariush Mehrjui. Mehrjui introduced realism, symbolism, and the sensibilities of art cinema. His films have some resemblance with those of Rosselini, De Sica and Satyajit Ray, but he also added something distinctively Iranian, in the process starting one of the greatest modern film waves. The one constant in Mehrjui‘s work has been his attention to the discontents of contemporary, primarily urban, Iran. His film The Pear Tree (1999) has been hailed as the apotheosis of the director‘s examination of the Iranian bourgeoisie. Since his film The Cow in 1969, Mehrjui, along with Nasser Taqvai and Masoud Kimiai, has been instrumental in paving the way for the Iranian cinematic renaissance, so called the „Iranian New Wave.“
Mehrjui has received 49 national and international awards.
