In theaters

BARAN, written and directed by Majid Majidi, in Farsi and Dari, with English subtitles, 94 minutes, not rated. Now playing, Movie City 8. Also just out on video and DVD.

“In 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. By the time the Soviets withdrew 10 years later, the country had become a ghost of its former self. The devastation, combined with the ensuing civil war, the brutal reign of the Taliban regime, and a three-year drought, prompted millions of Afghans to flee their country.

“The United Nations estimates that Iran now hosts 1.5 million Afghan refugees. Most of the young generation was born in Iran, and has never been home.”

So begins Majid Majidi’s powerful film “Baran,” a leisurely told tale that isn’t nearly as bleak as its opening title card suggests.

That’s one of its surprises, but there are others. Set in northern Iran, the film focuses in part on the hardships suffered by the Afghan people pre-Sept. 11, but also on the bond that forms between Lateef (Hossein Abedini), a lazy young Iranian construction worker, and Rahmat, an Afghan boy whose father was hurt in a fall at the construction site and whose family’s survival now depends on him.

When Lateef, a tea boy at the construction site, loses his job to Rahmat, thus damning him to a more difficult life of hauling sacks of cement for a living, he bullies the boy.

But as the story builds to its core revelation – a secret that won’t be revealed here but one that audiences will see coming long before Lateef – the film’s brooding mood lifts as Lateef’s world opens with unexpected possibilities, an infusion of hope and the prospect of love he finds in a mysterious Afghan girl named Baran (Zahra Bahrami).

Joining Mosen Makhmalbaf’s “Kandahar,” this year’s other timely, must-see film set in the Middle East, “Baran” offers U.S. audiences an opportunity to re-evaluate their opinions of the Irani and Afghan people by challenging how well they really know them. Are they so different from us? And if so, how different?

Based on Majidi’s own script, “Baran” begins with an aerial shot of the construction site before moving inside. There, everything seems to be smoldering, from the fires burning deep within the metal drums, which provide the only source of heat, to the people themselves, who are paid almost nothing for their work and whose faces reflect a desperation and a rage only matched by their fierce sense of pride.

As grim as the film sometimes is, “Baran” is hardly without humor. Sometimes it’s funny, particularly in the early scenes Lateef shares with his boss, Memar (Mohammad Reza Naji), and then later with Rahmat. It’s the film’s sharp, often mischievous sense of humor that will likely catch some off guard – especially since 13 months of news reports here in the states have suggested a light moment in the Middle East is as rare as a lasting sense of peace.

Grade: A-

Also in theaters

KANDAHAR, written and directed by Mosen Makhmalbaf, 85 minutes, not rated, in English and Farsi with English subtitles. Now playing, Movie City 8.

Mosen Makhmalbaf’s “Kandahar” follows one woman’s journey across the deserts of Iran to the border of Afghanistan.

There, in the now infamous city of Kandahar, Nafas (Nelofer Pazira), an Afghan journalist from Canada, hopes to save her sister’s life before she commits suicide during a pending solar eclipse.

Hindered at every turn by circumstance, bad luck and especially by Taliban rule, which prohibits women from traveling anywhere unescorted by men, Nafas’ three-day quest to beat the clock and rescue her sister is just as harrowing and as dangerous as you might expect.

Inspired by Pazira’s own true story and shot before Sept. 11, “Kandahar” feels more like a documentary than it does a dramatic feature, which is intentional.

Its substantial power comes not so much from its characters, who are thinly realized by Makhmalbaf’s spare script and sometimes awkwardly portrayed by the film’s nonprofessional actors, but from the haunting images of oppression, famine, fear and suffering that underscore everything.

From its opening shot of legless and one-legged men racing on crutches to the clouds of prosthetic limbs parachuting to the desert floor to the striking image of anonymous Afghan women defiantly applying lipstick and makeup beneath their burqas, “Kandahar” is filled with unforgettable moments.

As poorly dubbed and as crudely edited as it sometimes is, those qualities don’t harm the film as much as they give it energy. Indeed, “Kandahar” consistently feels as if it was shot on the fly, which fuels its sense of urgency and deepens its emotional weight.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6.

He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.