Iran's film-makers are altogether more humane and gentle than the country's government, and as virtue rarely goes unpunished, their films are frequently banned. Stray Dogs is a kindly, thoughtful, slightly sentimental movie by Marziyeh Meshkini, director of The Day I Became a Woman (2000), a quietly courageous attack on an oppressive patriarchy. Meshkini's husband, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and her stepdaughter, Samira, have both made films set in Afghanistan. Her new film takes place in Kabul two years after the Allied invasion and centres on a brother and sister who rescue a stray dog from a mob of children bent on burning this little collie, in the belief that it is Russian or American.

Like the dog, the kids are unprotected waifs, their father in jail on one side of the city for his Taliban sympathies, their mother incarcerated on the other (and threatened with a death sentence) for having remarried during her husband's absence fighting in a Holy War. On a freezing winter night, a new governor decrees that they are no longer allowed to share their mother's cell because prison is only for criminals, and they can't afford to shelter in a row of old market stalls that a slightly older boy hires out. They are advised to beg or steal, and eventually someone tells them to visit a cinema showing Bicycle Thieves (a key work for Iran's movie-makers). From Vittorio De Sica's film they learn how to get caught stealing and thus be sent to the comfort of prison. But things don't go according to plan, and the movie ends on a far less affirmative note than the Italian masterpiece. It's a bitter little tale, full of odd, ironic and illuminating detail.