Outside the ancient Iranian city of Shiraz, nomadic Qashqai sheepherders Valliolah and Dorna contend with local and prosaic concerns. Twelve sheep have been stolen from the flock and must be tracked down; their three adult sons aren’t particularly eager to help, preferring to play video games or hang out with friends from university rather than continue in the family trade. Soon, the annual migration will force everyone — human and animal alike — to travel overnight from the shrubby foothills under the Zagros mountains toward greener pastures, traversing urban sprawl and highways that now cut directly through the old nomadic routes.

This warm and pensive feature from Iranian filmmaker Hamed Zolfaghari showcases the people and culture of the region through gorgeous landscape cinematography, dreamy interludes and intriguing sheep-drama subplots. Zolfaghari’s sure-handed direction brings clear focus into a timeless — yet timely — Iranian story, with particular tension between tradition and modernization, the rural and urban, and parents and children. With archival family footage and playful cinematographic flourishes peppered throughout, this wonderful documentary is imbued with the sensitive and lush imaginings of a generations-old bedtime story, told just as night begins to fall.—Sam Hood