Sib plot
Samira Makhmalbaf made De Appel a few days after seeing a television report about a poor family, consisting of a father, a blind mother and twin girls of 12 years old. The father kept the girls locked up in the house from birth. They could barely talk and move normally, were not clean and poorly fed. A number of neighbors wrote a letter about this to the GGD and then the girls were -temporarily- placed out of their homes. During a recording period of eleven days, Samira and the family made a film about their situation, in which they themselves play the leading roles.