MY MOTHER, OAK

When the Karun-3 dam in Southwest Iran was put into operation, more than 12,300 acres of forest disappeared under the waves._High up in the Zagros Mountains the impoverished villagers illegally fell oak trees to make charcoal. In a shelter the filmmaker comes across Asad, a melancholy eccentric who is supposed to have gone crazy after a tragic love affair. Like the others, Asad has lost his house because the village was flooded when a dam was built nearby. Charcoal is now the only means the villagers have of providing for their families. But Asad can hear the silent screams of the trees where the axe is due to fall._A poetic elegy about a landscape of sunken dreams and a steadfast condemnation of dam projects that cause humanitarian and ecological damage.