When six-year-old Sophie is tragically orphaned guardianship is assigned to her estranged aunt Annabelle. The two move into a large, eerie, Victorian house where Sophie unearths a locked wooden box with a strange symbol drawn on it. Desperate to connect with her niece Annabelle pries the lock open revealing a beautiful music box. Each time the music box is wound and replayed it's surprisingly chilling melody plays slightly longer, captivating Sophie even more. When the music box begins affecting Sophie's behavior and health Annabelle seeks the aid of a child psychologist and clairvoyant who soon discover the music box is possessed by an evil spirit who seeks to haunt Sophie and destroy Annabelle. As the haunting intensifies time begins to run out and Annabelle finds herself racing against the music box's melody to defeat the spirit before the last note plays.
Post September 11, Mohsen Makhmalbaf tracks the children who do not attend school in the border villages between Iran and Afghanistan with his digital camera and questions why they are not being educated. He finds girls studying in UNICEF classes in one region. One of the girls is not willing to come out of her burqa despite the fact that she has run away from Afghanistan and the Taliban are not present here. She is more afraid of the horrifying god that the Taliban have created more than the Taliban. The teacher tries… Director's commentary: The Taliban was not a political regime in Afghanistan but they are still a culture. Bombarding can ruin a political regime but it cannot change a culture. You cannot free a woman whom is imprisoned in the burqa with a rocket. The Afghan girl needs education. She doesn’t know that she doesn’t know. She is imprisoned but she does not know that she is a prisoner of poverty, ignorance, prejudice, male chauvinism and superstition. 95% of the women and 80% of the men in Afghanistan did not have the chance to attend school even before the Taliban. The film seeks the lost key to be able to open the lock of the cultural problems of Afghanistan. From the IMDB: In 2002 about 3 million Afghan Refugee were living in Iran. From those about 700,000 were Afghan Children who were not allowed to go to Iranian schools because of their illegal status in Iran. After this movie was made, this subject became controversial and finally the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) passed a bill in which the Afghani children were allowed to go to school and it resulted in 500,000 kids getting education.
