Dreams fade as bombs fall in directing duo Rakhshan Bani-Etemad and Mohsen Abdolvahab's tale of a mother whose hopes for a bright future for her two children are forever dashed by the horrors of war. The year is 1988, and Iraqi bombs are laying waste to Tehran. In the Iranian countryside, concerned mother Gilaneh (Fatemeh Motamed Arya) watches helplessly as her son Ismaeel (Bahram Radan) marches off to war and her pregnant daughter, Maygol (Baran Kosari), vows to travel to the war-torn Iranian capitol to search for her husband, who has just abandoned his post. As the United States attacks Baghdad on the same date 15 years later, the weary mother lovingly tends to her ravaged son's lingering war wounds despite a local doctor's repeated pleas to move Ismaeel to a veteran's hospital.