Synopsis

Detective Babak Hafizi is being interrogated by the secret police. Everything began on January 23, 1965, the day after the Prime Minister was shot in front of Parliament. Hafizi was ordered to investigate the suspicious suicide of an exiled political prisoner on the remote island of Qeshm in the Persian Gulf. In an abandoned ship next to an ancient cemetery in the desert, Hafizi stumbles upon an even bigger mystery. A local gravedigger tells him about the legend of earthquakes occurring whenever someone is buried in the haunted cemetery. Seeing is believing for Hafizi and he dares to spend the night alone in the creepy ship, waiting for the ground to shake. Back in Tehran, Hafizi is determined to discover the truth about his eerie experience, even without agency approval. He recruits two other young men: Behnam Shokouhi, a geologist who has just returned from his studies in Germany, and Keyvan Haddad, a film sound engineer. The three men set off to the fascinating island, hoping to solve the graveyard mystery. Hafizi's orange Chevrolet Impala heads straight for the ship, said to have belonged to the Portuguese naval forces in the 17th Century, and plundered by the British explorer William Baffin. Its interior walls are covered with the dead exile's cryptic writings and enigmatic symbols. Might these be clues to solving the case? What about surly Almas, the shark-hunting ophthalmologist, and his missing daughter, Halimeh? Could she be hiding somewhere in the majestic Valley of Stars? The geologist confirms that there was indeed an earthquake in the area as Hafizi claims, but it was unbelievably limited to the confines of the cemetery. To test the truth about the graveyard legend, the three men must look for a corpse to bury there, and to dig even deeper to see what might lie beneath the graves. Paranoia and hallucination take over as their dangerous investigation continues, and the truth remains elusive until 50 years later, when an old box is discovered in the back of a closet and its contents shine a strange light on the mystery.—yusufpiskin

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