Heaving for breath, leaden feet and a seemingly endless flight of stairs weigh down the small frame of this film's young male protagonist. Yet upon reaching the roof of the building and setting down his heavy bag of cement, the boy seizes his moment of accomplishment with an act of such lighthearted exuberance that when he hoists a new bag onto his shoulders and begins his ascent again, he has transformed drudgery and exhaustion into anticipation for another such moment of joy.

Walid Hreib studied film editing in Germany and has worked on more than forty feature-length and short films. He has directed a number of short fiction films himself, including al-Mazra'a al-Jadida (One day at the Farm, 1984), al-Ajjaj (1989), al-Hanin (Nostalgia, 1993), Tuqus Furatiyya (Rituals of the Euphrates, 1995), Lahthat Farah (A Moment of Joy, 2001) and Metr Murabba'ah (A Square Meter, 2003).