A Soviet production by the Armenian master Hamo Beiknazarian, Khas-push dramatizes the Tobacco Protest of 1890, in which an influential clergyman issued a fatwa and banned the use of tobacco after a Qajar king offered a tobacco concession to the United Kingdom. Because Reza Shah often refused to allow foreigners to film in Iran, scenes of revolt against imperialism and theocracy were instead shot in the neighboring Soviet Union. What results is both a paean to Soviet ideals of collective sacrifice—a rag picker becomes a hero—and an astute portrait of political conflict in Iran at the time.