The 10 minute film begins with a boy returning home through empty semi-urban alleys holding bread he has purchased for the family. He is merrily kicking an empty can as boy would a football. Suddenly a growling stray dog is in his way. The boy freezes in fear. He waits for someone to give him company to negotiate the alley. An old partly deaf man comes and the boy picks up the courage to follow him. But the old man enters a door in the alley and the boy is in square one.
He decides to throw a bit of the bread to the dog and negotiate the rest of the alley. The dog is happy and escorts the boy wagging his tail. At the door of his home, the boy's mother slams the door on the face of the dog.
Cut to the next day. The boy is negotiating the same alley and the dog with a bowl of milk or buttermilk. The boy has drunk some of it as he has a milk mustache in evidence. This time the dog is angry and the bowl of milk is dropped.
Why does the dog behave this way? The slammed door? It is for the viewer's interpretation.
This short was on show in a section on Early Iranian cinema at the on-going International Film Festival of Kerala, India
Interestingly dogs in some Muslim countries are not considered clean and not encouraged as pets. I wonder what the director Abbas Kiorastami's view on dogs are.
P.S. The film is shot in color. The film is not in b/w as stated by IMDb.
