Ten-year-old Niaz lives in a log cabin on the side of a hill with his parents, grandmother and his younger sister, Noora. They subsist on a few farm animals and the coal kiln, where the father toils, burning rotten and dead wood to create coal. Up to then their only concern was the encroaching developers who are raping the forest. However, their world is turned upside down when Noora suffers a crippling accident. The local healer can't cure her and the parents can't afford the price of proper medical attention. Niaz, feeling he is responsible, vows to find a way of putting things right.  

With a score that manages to be both haunting and exultant, and a sense of fatalism that would sit easily alongside Ingmar Bergman's more sombre work, Noora is enlivened by a sense of simple faith. In Niaz, the implacable belief that God will right everything provides an added sense of poignancy. It is unlikely that Noora will walk again, but while the adults despair, the faith and innocence of a child can find transcendence.