Dokhtar

I have often wondered what draws me to Iranian cinema. Somehow the movies from this country which make it to the European festival circuit are almost always very good. They tend to be emotionally complex and also quite subtle tales about ordinary people with their troubles and choices set against the backdrop of a totalitarian and outwardly very religious society.

This movie tells us about a girl who goes against her father's wish (possibly the first time ever) and it ends in a tragedy (or so it seems to her, at least at first). The movie sort of switches its focus somewhere in the middle: instead of the daughter, the father becomes the main protagonist of the second half of the movie. He's an excellent character, a huge mountain of a man who makes his point with silence for most of the time, keeping his words and outside expressions of emotion at a minimum. It is interesting how the dad (who seems to be almost like the villain of this movie in the beginning, a harsh and unpredictable man overly protective of his daughter) slowly becomes somebody who the viewer can sympathize with.

It can't be said that the people in this film manage to solve their issues by the end of the movie. There is no happy end (or even an ending as such, in the sense of how we usually think of movie endings). Still, it seems that some progress has been made and the viewer can be reasonably certain that the relationship between the father and the daughter will at least be more honest and open in the future.