Though it takes a turn toward the tragic in the final scenes, the third film (and second Cannes jury prizewinner) by the 23-year-old Iranian director Samira Makhmalbaf is as hopeful as a movie can be when set amid a group of refugees in post-Taliban Kabul. And despite the deprivations suffered by its subjects, At Five in the Afternoon is distinguished by the elegance and eloquence of its images.

Like Makhmalbaf's past arthouse hits, The Apple and Blackboards, At Five in the Afternoon features a non-professional cast and was developed in collaboration with Samira's father, Mohsen. (To complete the family circle, Samira's 14-year-old sister, Hana, made a documentary about the making of At Five in the Afternoon.) Her heroine is Noqreh (Agheleh Rezaie), a spirited young woman who wants to be Afghanistan's first female prime minister. Her political ambitions are imperilled by many factors. One is her father (Abdolgani Yousefrazi), a conservative man who doesn't know that his daughter's going to school -- Noqreh is careful to change her high heels for slippers before coming home. Another is the possibility of romance with a sweet-tempered poet (Razi Mohebi). But the gravest problem is her family's homelessness -- when they are crowded out of their living quarters by other refugees, the family seeks refuge in a plane wreck, then in a bombed-out but still majestic parliament building.

The director is nearly as fascinated with this last site as she is with her protagonist -- haunting and original, these sequences confirm that she has fully inherited the visual sense that made her father's Gabbeh and Kandahar so startling. Yet Noqreh, who's forthright nearly to the point of arrogance, remains the most compelling aspect of this post-war landscape.

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