In a parched badland village that looks like the end of the world, Solan is the only teacher. After years of enduring the poorly paid temporary job, he holds one modest dream - to become a full-time teacher and to live in a proper house with his mother. But everything begins to unravel with the death of the benefactor who had funded the school’s meal program. If the meals stop, most of the students will stop coming, and the school’s closure becomes inevitable. The education office offers no real help, only an order to keep the classes running. Desperate, Solan withdraws his rental deposit, moves into the school, and begins a precarious double life as a teacher by day, and oil smuggler by night. And through it all, his mother stays by his side, quietly trusting him. In Midday Meal, Iranian master Majid Majidi shows this world with unflinching rawness, and his direction reveals a gift for capturing layered emotions that resist easy words. His camera runs close to the characters’ emotions, then falls still at key moments, heightening the drama through that very stillness. Do Solan’s ends justify the means? Are choices driven by pure goodwill, or are they nothing more than self-interest masquerading as virtue? Within its own running time, the film can only project a single facet of reality, but how far today’s conscience might take root for generations to come is left to the audience. (PARK Sungho)