Teenager, Clare Steves, is kidnapped by an old boyfriend, Eddie Spencer, who demands $250,000. The ransom is paid and Clare is released, but when the kidnapers are caught, they claim that the whole scheme was Clare's idea as a way to punish her father.
Director Mohsen Makhmalbaf claims to have never seen a movie before making his first film. Doubtful as it sounds, this boast matches perfectly with the controversial artist's personae.
A doctor and his wife move to a new city where they plan to start a new life. However, trouble strikes in the form of a police inspector who gets completely obsessed with the doctor's wife.
On the highway of life, Jerry's at a dead-end. Unemployed and still living at home with his parents, this thirty-three year old loser has no drive to better his life.
BEAUTIFUL FUNERALS is a hand-painted double-step-printed film composed of 1) dense blackness variously punctuated by brilliantly colored jewel/flower-like shapes AND 2) interruptive white sections which are fuzzily dotted with blurred whites and criss-crossed by black "brushstrokes" and hard-edge straight black and white lines.