Touch the sound, see the music! In a Kurdish mountain village near the Iraqi border, Faegh lives with his eleven children and three wives. The family manufactures traditional frame drums called dafs. Everyone mucks in according to his abilities, as their survival depends on the dafs. The children buy the wood and are helped by their father to prepare it for shaping into round frames. They then tan sheep hides for the skins of the tambourines.

The camera follows the construction of the dafs through its various phases. Through the music, we enter the life of this unusual family. The daf holds a special place in the Kurdish community. It is played not only to celebrate the birth of a child but also when they are in mourning. Several of Faegh's children have been blind from birth. The money from selling the dafs is to be spent on an eye operation for the youngest child. The mystic power of the daf's sound is meant to help him recover from the operation. There are almost no words in Bahman Ghobadi's film. The images and sounds interact freely in the telling of this story.

Two Bows celebrates the soaring beauty of Iranian classical music through an in-depth look at two musicians playing an ancient instrument called the kamancheh. Reza Derakhshani and Taqi Shekarchian live in two complete different worlds. In Rome, Reza Derakshani who was born in the small Iranian village of Sangsar, successfully blends ancient music with contemporary practice. He infuses his performances of the kamancheh with free jazz and electronic rhythms and plays regularly at sold-out concerts. He lives a wealthy life and is constantly invited to cocktail parties.

Meanwhile in Bandar Turkaman in northern Iran, traditional musician Bahram Berdikor contemplates ending his poor and desolate life. Acknowledged as one of the greatest Turkoman kamancheh players alive, he nonetheless seldom receives invitations to play his traditional-style music publicly. The most beautiful kamancheh pieces are forbidden by the religious regime as they are considered offensive. Young people listen to pop music and have no interest in his traditional music. Kiarostami's camera captures sharp insights into two different worlds of music through plain and focussed images and the unique sound of the kamancheh.

"It seems to come from a far away place and a far away time, and reach into parts of your soul that you haven’t encountered before." Kayhan Kalhor