Despite the film’s two-hour plus running time, the story is incredibly simple. A man, lying unconscious in a small boat, washes up on the shore of a peaceful seaside village. He is wounded, and all he remembers is that his name is Ayat (Farsi for “the sign”). Despite their initial distrust of Ayat, the people eventually accept him (after a series of grueling physical tests) and he falls in love with and marries a young widowed mother named Rana. Eventually, however, ominous men come to take Ayat away, and in a stunning fifteen-minute sequence, the townspeople help Ayat fight and kill the intruders. Fearing that more men will return and harm his newfound friends, Ayat leaves the village in that same boat he arrived in. We never find out who the men were or why they were chasing Ayat.
