Araf is the story of Zehra and Olgun whose lives are caught in a vacuum. The world in which they live and work is a place of throwaway culture and constant change. They too are waiting for a chance to change and escape from their empty, monotonous lives.
The film focuses on the suffering of Chinese who were imprisoned in a forced labor camp called Jiabiangou in the Gobi Desert in winter 1960 under Mao Zedong on the grounds that they were "rightist elements". The film tells of the harsh life of these men, who coped with physical exhaustion, extreme cold, starvation and death on a daily basis.
Kai (Jack Yao), who works at his parent's noodle shop by day and spends his nights in a bookstore to learn French, decides to go to Paris after his girlfriend, who recently left for Paris, dumps him by phone. Then the local neighborhood mafia boss offers Kai a free plane ticket to Paris if he takes a mysterious package with him.
Chang-ho, 12, becomes friends with a North-Korean immigrant about the same age who just crossed the Dooman river, border between North-Korea and China. His mute sister and his wise grandfather accompany him through a series of misfortunes.
Twenty-year-old Kamal has been married for a few months but his wife is still a virgin. Learning that there is nothing physically wrong with him after visiting a doctor, Kamal sets off to town to search for another woman. The city is full of them but Kamal is still unable to meet anyone, until a chance encounter on a bus. But it looks as if this accidental meeting will take Kamal much farther than he was prepared to go… By the director of ‘Angel on the Right’. —Celluloid Dreams
