{ "id": "epgmnv6c18", "slug": "the-apple-1998-film", "title": "The Apple (سیب) (1998 film)", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1990s", "label": "Drama films 1990s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1990s" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1990s.drama-films-late-1990s", "label": "Drama films late 1990s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1990s.drama-films-late-1990s" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1990s.drama-films-late-1990s.yr-1995-1998", "label": "Released 1995 to 1998", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1990s.drama-films-late-1990s.yr-1995-1998" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.mena.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Middle East and North Africa · 1946 to 2000: Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "path": [ { "id": "geo.mena", "label": "Middle East and North Africa", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena" }, { "id": "geo.mena.t1946", "label": "Middle East and North Africa · 1946 to 2000", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena.t1946" }, { "id": "geo.mena.t1946.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena.t1946.culture" }, { "id": "geo.mena.t1946.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.mena.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.mena.t1946.culture.performance.screen" } ] } ], "excerpt": "The Apple (سیب, Sib) is Samira Makhmalbaf's 1998 feature debut, a docudrama in which the real Naderi family re-enacts the confinement of twin daughters in Tehran; shown in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 1998.", "snippet": "The Apple (سیب, Sib) is Samira Makhmalbaf's 1998 feature debut, a docudrama in which the real Naderi family re-enacts the confinement of twin daughters in Tehran; shown in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 1998.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1990s.drama-films-late-1990s.yr-1995-1998", "markdown": "# The Apple (سیب) (1998 film)\n\n**The Apple** (سیب, *Sib*) is a 1998 docudrama by the Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf, her feature debut, based on the true case of twin sisters Massoumeh and Zahra Naderi of Tehran, who were kept locked inside their family home by their parents for roughly the first twelve years of their lives.[1](https://journal.eticaycine.org/Confined-Childhoods-Allegory-and-Subjectivation-in-Samira-Makhmalbaf-s-The) The film has the actual family members, none of them professional actors, re-enact their own story, and it was selected for the Un Certain Regard section of the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.[2](https://fest.afi.com/1998/world-cinema-1998/the-apple-2/) • [3](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/1011/1112?inline=1)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Director / debut | Samira Makhmalbaf's first feature, made at age 17 or 18 (sources differ); her father Mohsen Makhmalbaf wrote and edited[4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-mar-05-ca-14073-story.html) • [5](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/bibliography/samira-makhmalbaf-1980/) |\n| Subject | Twin sisters Massoumeh and Zahra Naderi, confined at home from birth by their father Ghorbanali Naderi and their blind mother Soghra, found unable to walk or speak properly when a social worker intervened[1](https://journal.eticaycine.org/Confined-Childhoods-Allegory-and-Subjectivation-in-Samira-Makhmalbaf-s-The) • [6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_apple_1999) |\n| Production | Shooting began four days after the case broke in the press; the entire film was shot in 11 days with the real family playing themselves[4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-mar-05-ca-14073-story.html) |\n| Festival / release | Un Certain Regard, Cannes 1998; released 27 May 1998[3](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/1011/1112?inline=1) • [6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_apple_1999) |\n| Format | Iran/France co-production, 85 minutes, in Farsi; produced by Marin Karmitz and Veronique Cayla[2](https://fest.afi.com/1998/world-cinema-1998/the-apple-2/) |\n| Reception | 85% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes from 47 reviews; invited to more than 100 festivals, screened in over 30 countries, and winner of 13 international awards per the Makhmalbaf family site[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_apple_1999) • [7](https://www.makhmalbaf.com/?q=fa%2Ffilm%2F%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A8) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nTehran, the late 1990s, a poor walled house in a working-class alley. Behind a chained gate live Massoumeh and Zahra (Masoumeh and Zahra Naderi), twin girls who move in a crouch, make animal sounds, and have never learned to speak. Their father, Ghorban Ali Naderi (Ghorban Ali Naderi), an elderly and deeply religious man, has kept them locked up for eleven years. Their mother, Azizeh (Azizeh Mohammadi), is blind and mostly confined to fragments of the house.\n\nThe neighbors have informed the welfare ministry, and a social worker comes to the house to take the girls into care[16](https://www.makhmalbaf.com/?q=film%2Fapple). The father resists, and the film gives him the space to argue his case at length, directly into the camera: his wife is blind, he cannot watch the girls every second, boys on the street would molest them, so he decided the world was the danger and the locked room the protection. He is not played as a monster; he is a man explaining his own logic, and the film lets the logic condemn itself. The social worker, playing herself, presses back, and the two conduct a debate about children, God, and authority in which neither is simply right.\n\nThe ministry takes the girls, then returns them to their father on the condition that he never lock them up again. He locks them up again almost immediately[17](https://www.d85.makhmalbaf.com/en/film/apple). So the social worker changes tactics. She locks the father inside the house, behind the very bars he used on his daughters, and leaves him there with a saw while she takes the children out to play in the streets[17](https://www.d85.makhmalbaf.com/en/film/apple).\n\n**The film's most quoted sequence is the moment of first contact with the world.** The social worker gives each girl a mirror and a comb, and Massoumeh and Zahra see their own faces, apparently for the first time, a delayed version of what psychologists call the mirror stage. Samira Makhmalbaf explained the choice simply: \"Women look in the mirror and find themselves.\"[18](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/cteq/the-apple/) Out in the alley, the neighborhood children become their first teachers. A boy dangles an apple on a string just out of the twins' reach, teasing them with the fruit they cannot get[18](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/cteq/the-apple/). The girls steal ice creams and apples from a shop because they have no concept of money[19](https://movieretrospect.blogspot.com/2013/09/samira-makhmalbafs-apple-analysis.html). One twin keeps trying to slip back behind the gate, toward the only world she knows; the other wanders toward the street. The camera watches all of it with a patience that refuses both pity and spectacle.\n\nThe apples keep coming. In the care of the welfare department, the girls take their first-ever bite of an apple, and the moment coincides with their freedom[20](https://projectedfigures.com/2016/06/01/the-apple-1998/). Meanwhile their father saws through his own bars, a role reversal the film plays not as comeuppance but as something like an awakening: the man learning, physically, what a locked door feels like[21](https://cinefilesreviews.com/2016/04/04/the-psychology-philosophy-of-the-apple-1998-abusive-paternalism/). In the end, the freed girls come back and work to free their father from the house-prison[17](https://www.d85.makhmalbaf.com/en/film/apple). The last shot belongs to the mother: the blind woman wanders out of the house for what seems like the first time and grasps the dangling apple in her hand, and the film freezes on that image[19](https://movieretrospect.blogspot.com/2013/09/samira-makhmalbafs-apple-analysis.html).\n\n### Characters\n\nMassoumeh Naderi (as herself) is one of the twin girls, the film's center of gravity, a child of thirteen with the body language of someone raised in a cage: crouched, wordless, suddenly shrieking with delight at an ice cream.\n\nZahra Naderi (as herself) is the other twin, and the film's quiet thesis. She is the one who keeps trying to return behind the gate, showing that freedom is not automatically preferable to a cage when the cage is all you have ever known.\n\nGhorban Ali Naderi (as himself) is the father, poor, elderly, and religious, who imprisoned his daughters out of a protective logic he defends at length and with evident sincerity. He is the film's most uncomfortable presence precisely because he is not acting.\n\nAzizeh Mohammadi (as herself) is the blind mother, seen mostly in fragments, a woman who could not see her daughters for years and holds no power over anyone, until the final shot hands her the apple.\n\nThe social worker (as herself) is the state's representative, who argues with the father, takes the girls, and finally locks the father in his own prison to teach him what it was like.\n\n### Interpretations and controversies\n\nThe apple is the film's loaded symbol. In Iranian poetry, Makhmalbaf has said, the apple symbolizes life and knowledge, as in the [Adam and Eve](https://www.edgepedia.org/adam-and-eve) story of the Bible and the Koran, and she insists she found it in the children's own world rather than inventing it[18](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/cteq/the-apple/) • [22](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/pdf/2023-07-06-apple.pdf). Critics read the whole film as a Genesis allegory of a new life beginning[20](https://projectedfigures.com/2016/06/01/the-apple-1998/), and as a feminist allegory about women seizing opportunities, a reading that may have helped it slip past Iranian censors under cover of a child's story[19](https://movieretrospect.blogspot.com/2013/09/samira-makhmalbafs-apple-analysis.html).\n\nThe bigger controversy is ethical: Makhmalbaf persuaded the real family to reenact their own scandal, and reviewers have asked where moral outrage ends and artistic opportunism begins[23](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/reviews/applehowe.htm). J. Hoberman wondered whether the twins were truly set free; two years later came a report that the girls attended school, could talk, read, and write, and were excellent students[18](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/cteq/the-apple/).\n\n## The true story behind the film\n\nThe case concerned an impoverished, religious 65-year-old father in southern Tehran who, with his blind wife, kept his twin daughters locked in the family's one-room house from birth, cutting them off from school, neighbors, and the street.[8](https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/1420?id=1420) • [9](https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/apple/) Neighbors eventually petitioned Tehran's welfare organization, and a social worker found the girls unable to talk or walk properly.[4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-mar-05-ca-14073-story.html) • [8](https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/1420?id=1420) The father's stated conviction was that letting the girls out would expose them to corruption by males and the vices of the outside world.[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_apple_1999)\n\nThe case was widely reported in Iranian media and stirred furious debate; some commentators saw it as a national scandal exposing gender inequality, noting that boys could play freely in the streets while girls could not.[10](https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Iran-s-Apple-Blurs-Fact-Fiction-2939821.php) According to the Makhmalbaf family's own synopsis, the welfare organization returned the girls to their father on condition that he not imprison them again, he did so anyway, and a nurse who came to care for the girls finally locked the father inside the house so the girls could play in the street.[7](https://www.makhmalbaf.com/?q=fa%2Ffilm%2F%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A8)\n\n## Production and method\n\nSamira Makhmalbaf, daughter of the major Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf (*Gabbeh*, *[A Moment of Innocence](https://www.edgepedia.org/a-moment-of-innocence)*), began shooting only four days after the story broke in the press and completed the film in 11 days.[4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-mar-05-ca-14073-story.html) She persuaded the father and his family to play themselves, and the film deliberately blurs the line between documentary and staged fiction: reviewers repeatedly note that it is hard to tell whether the encounters on the street are recorded or staged, and whether the girls are being themselves or playing themselves.[4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-mar-05-ca-14073-story.html) • [11](https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1998/dec/24/features11.g213) The Deseret News described the approach as a pseudo-documentary style applied to a re-creation of events rather than straightforward documentation.[12](https://www.deseret.com/1999/7/2/19453588/fact-based-iranian-film-the-apple-is-appealing-in-an-odd-way/)\n\nThe film sits in a recognizable Iranian tradition of restaging lived experiences with non-professional actors, a practice scholars have connected to [Abbas Kiarostami](https://www.edgepedia.org/abbas-kiarostami)'s *Close-Up* (1990), in which Makhmalbaf's father had himself been the subject.[13](https://widescreenjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/filmic-performance-authenticity-and-the-apple.pdf) • [11](https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1998/dec/24/features11.g213) One of the film's strangest devices, noted by Jonathan Romney in *The Guardian*, is the sight of Mr. Naderi reading and lamenting the newspaper reports of his own case.[11](https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1998/dec/24/features11.g213)\n\n## Themes and symbolism\n\nThe apple of the title is a recurring motif: a boy carries one on a stick, and the girls, who would rather have an apple than an ice cream bar they know nothing about, chase after it in a series of shots critics read as a symbol of knowledge and enjoyment of life.[4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-mar-05-ca-14073-story.html) • [8](https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/1420?id=1420) • [3](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/1011/1112?inline=1) Several critics read the twins as a metaphor for the condition of women in Iran; the [San Francisco Chronicle](https://www.edgepedia.org/san-francisco-chronicle) reviewer found the metaphor convincing but noted that the family situation is specific enough that taking it as a larger comment requires a interpretive leap.[10](https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Iran-s-Apple-Blurs-Fact-Fiction-2939821.php) A later scholarly article reads the family as a micro-representation of power structures in post-1979 Iran, with the father personifying the State and the mother the clergy, and the apple and a mirror as symbols of the girls' search for freedom.[1](https://journal.eticaycine.org/Confined-Childhoods-Allegory-and-Subjectivation-in-Samira-Makhmalbaf-s-The)\n\n## Reception and legacy\n\nThe film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 1998 and went on to wide festival exposure; the Makhmalbaf family site records invitations to more than 100 international festivals within two years, releases in more than 30 countries, 13 international awards, and a FIPRESCI critics' prize at Locarno in 1998.[3](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/1011/1112?inline=1) • [7](https://www.makhmalbaf.com/?q=fa%2Ffilm%2F%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A8) On Rotten Tomatoes it holds an 85% Tomatometer from 47 reviews and an 83% audience score.[6](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_apple_1999) [Jean-Luc Godard](https://www.edgepedia.org/jean-luc-godard) repeatedly praised the film, according to the family site.[14](https://www.makhmalbaf.com/~makhmalb/?q=fa%2Fsamira)\n\nThe debut made Samira Makhmalbaf internationally known at 17 or 18; one critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, called her the most famous teenage filmmaker in the world a few years after the film's release.[15](https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/journals/irfa/v4i3/f_0030232_24443.pdf) She followed it with *The Blackboard* (2000), which won the Jury Prize at Cannes.[5](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/bibliography/samira-makhmalbaf-1980/)\n\nSources disagree on the director's age at the time of filming: the Los Angeles Times and Dennis Schwartz say 17, while the Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, and AFI say 18; Cinema Iranica gives her birth date as 1980, which places the 1998 shoot around her 18th birthday.[4](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-mar-05-ca-14073-story.html) • [9](https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/apple/) • [2](https://fest.afi.com/1998/world-cinema-1998/the-apple-2/) • [5](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/bibliography/samira-makhmalbaf-1980/) Runtime also varies slightly by source, 85 minutes in most festival and review listings against 83 minutes on the family site.[2](https://fest.afi.com/1998/world-cinema-1998/the-apple-2/) • [7](https://www.makhmalbaf.com/?q=fa%2Ffilm%2F%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A8)\n\n## References\n\n1. [Confined Childhoods: Allegory and Subjectivation in Samira Makhmalbaf's The Apple, Journal de Etica y Cine](https://journal.eticaycine.org/Confined-Childhoods-Allegory-and-Subjectivation-in-Samira-Makhmalbaf-s-The)\n2. [The Apple, AFI FEST 1998 World Cinema](https://fest.afi.com/1998/world-cinema-1998/the-apple-2/)\n3. [Cannes 2003 Report, KINEMA (University of Waterloo)](https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/download/1011/1112?inline=1)\n4. ['Apple' Tells Extraordinary Story in Modern-Day Iran, Los Angeles Times, 5 March 1999](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-mar-05-ca-14073-story.html)\n5. [Samira Makhmalbaf, Cinema Iranica bibliography](https://cinema.iranicaonline.org/bibliography/samira-makhmalbaf-1980/)\n6. [The Apple, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_apple_1999)\n7. [سیب (The Apple), Makhmalbaf Family Official Website](https://www.makhmalbaf.com/?q=fa%2Ffilm%2F%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%A8)\n8. [The Apple film review, Spirituality & Practice](https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/reviews/view/1420?id=1420)\n9. [Apple, The, Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews](https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/apple/)\n10. [Iran's 'Apple' Blurs Fact, Fiction, San Francisco Chronicle, 26 March 1999](https://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/Iran-s-Apple-Blurs-Fact-Fiction-2939821.php)\n11. [Other new releases: Right to the core, The Guardian, 23 December 1998](https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1998/dec/24/features11.g213)\n12. [Fact-based Iranian film 'The Apple' is appealing in an odd way, Deseret News, 2 July 1999](https://www.deseret.com/1999/7/2/19453588/fact-based-iranian-film-the-apple-is-appealing-in-an-odd-way/)\n13. [Filmic Performance – Authenticity and The Apple, Wide Screen journal](https://widescreenjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/filmic-performance-authenticity-and-the-apple.pdf)\n14. [سمیرا (Samira), Makhmalbaf Family Official Website](https://www.makhmalbaf.com/~makhmalb/?q=fa%2Fsamira)\n15. [Iranian Review of Foreign Affairs](https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/journals/irfa/v4i3/f_0030232_24443.pdf)\n16. [https://www.makhmalbaf.com/?q=film%2Fapple](https://www.makhmalbaf.com/?q=film%2Fapple)\n17. [https://www.d85.makhmalbaf.com/en/film/apple](https://www.d85.makhmalbaf.com/en/film/apple)\n18. [https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/cteq/the-apple/](https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2024/cteq/the-apple/)\n19. [https://movieretrospect.blogspot.com/2013/09/samira-makhmalbafs-apple-analysis.html](https://movieretrospect.blogspot.com/2013/09/samira-makhmalbafs-apple-analysis.html)\n20. [https://projectedfigures.com/2016/06/01/the-apple-1998/](https://projectedfigures.com/2016/06/01/the-apple-1998/)\n21. [https://cinefilesreviews.com/2016/04/04/the-psychology-philosophy-of-the-apple-1998-abusive-paternalism/](https://cinefilesreviews.com/2016/04/04/the-psychology-philosophy-of-the-apple-1998-abusive-paternalism/)\n22. [https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/pdf/2023-07-06-apple.pdf](https://bfidatadigipres.github.io/pdf/2023-07-06-apple.pdf)\n23. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/reviews/applehowe.htm](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/movies/reviews/applehowe.htm)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1990s › Drama films late 1990s › Released 1995 to 1998*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-apple-1998-film", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-apple-1998-film.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"The Apple (سیب) (1998 film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-apple-1998-film. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[The Apple (سیب) (1998 film)](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-apple-1998-film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/the-apple-1998-film](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-apple-1998-film). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"The Apple (سیب) (1998 film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-apple-1998-film. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "The Apple is Samira Makhmalbaf's 1998 feature debut, a docudrama in which the real Naderi family re-enacts the confinement of twin daughters in Tehran; shown in Un Certain Regard at Cannes 1998." }