Watched this film yesterday that won Un Certain Regard (Avenir Prize) at Cannes Film Fest. 2015 (tied with Indian entry 'Masaan').
Among the family dysfunctional Iranian films, two films ... Asghar Farhadi's Oscar-winning 'A Separation' (2011) and Shlomi Elkabetz's Golden Globe winner 'Gett: The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem' (2014) .... had taken the film world by storm for their in-depth portrayal of conservative and highly patriarchal Iranian society.
Following closely on the heels comes yet another Iranian film that can truly compete with these two preceding films in terms of the script and the presentation ... and that film is 'NAHID' directed by Ida Panahandeh.
The film makes a poignant commentary on Iran's ancient but still-on-the-books laws regarding Iranian marriages. In case of divorce, the law gives the child's custody exclusively to the father unless he agrees otherwise. In the instant case, the husband agrees to let his divorced wife have custody of their son so long as she doesn't remarry.
Another ancient law comes into play, involving a Sharia law particular to Iran. It allows for a religiously sanctioned temporary marriage, a dispensation that can cover anything from a long-term affair to polygamy to one-month temporary marriage without changing one's official marital status.
Against this backdrop and in a conservative and highly patriarchal society, the film tells a very complicated story of a debt-ridden single divorced mother engaged in the seemingly impossible task of trying to hold onto the custody of her only son while contemplating remarrying her newly found love at the same time.
The highlights of the film are superb directorial debut by Ida Panahandeh and amazing acting by Sareh Bayat in the lead role of 'Nahid'.
Ida Panahandeh has handled this complicated story with great finesse and richly deserves the award as the best debutante director. And the less said the better about the acting potential of Sareh Bayat. Many might have seen her as the pregnant maidservant in Asghar Farhadi's 'A Separation' around whom the film revolves. In this film, she has come up with yet another brilliant performance carrying the entire film on her shoulders. She has tremendous acting potential which certainly needs to be explored.
The other leading actors Pejman Bazeghi, Navid Mohammadzadeh and Milad HosseinPour (in the kid's role) too have done justice to their respective roles.
Another worth mentioning aspect of the film is its brilliant cinematography by Morteza Gheidi. He does a fantastic job of capturing the moods in the bleak wintry backwater, glittering lights reflected in the river water, bustling markets and musty cafes.
Overall, it's a brilliant film which must be watched.
My rating: 8 out of 10.
