Toothache
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Country: Iran
Year: 1980
Runtime: 25 minutes
Color / Mono
Though much of this film is a straightforward lecture on dental hygiene delivered by a dentist facing the camera, it still manages to be persuasively Kiarostami-esque in its description of young Mohammad-Reza's life at home and at school before he falls prey to tooth woes (interestingly, Kiarostami found the boy who was having a tooth removed, then filmed the earlier parts of the story later). That some audiences find the film amusing testifies to the humor that can accompany great discomfort.