News

One of the two Iranian entries at this year’s Cannes competition, this is Saeed Roustayi‘s first time. Starring Taraneh Alidoosti, Saeed Poursamimi, Navid Mohammadzadeh, Payman Maadi — Leila’s Brothers is the filmmaker first trip to Cannes. Previously he directed Life and a Day (2016) and Just 6.5 (2019).

With a 2h45 runtime, this centers around Leila — the young matriarch having to juggle many agendas – excluding her own. Caring for her parents and four brothers — this is at once a parable about debt, being indebted and a patriarchal overreach.

Currently with fifteen of our twenty critics having graded the film, despite some support Leila’s Brothers enters the grid at a paltry 2.7 — which places this almost at the bottom.…...

Iran’s Saeed Roustayi puts the spotlight on a woman driven to distraction by the indolent, incompetent patriarchy

Iranian film-maker Saeed Roustayi delivers a big, absorbing, character-driven family drama in the Italian-American style with fierce performances, a huge set-piece wedding scene and touches of Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers and Coppola’s The Godfather. There’s even some Arthur Miller amid the angry, painful recrimination.

We get a blistering turn from Taraneh Alidoosti – known for her work on movies by Asghar Farhadi – playing the Leila of the title: a woman driven to distraction by the indolent, incompetent patriarchy. Leila lives with her elderly parents; she is plagued with periodic back pain brought on by stress and overwork and is basically the only regular wage-earner, single-handedly supporting four adult brothers.

Overweight Parviz (Farhad Aslani) works as a toilet cleaner in the mall, but does not make enough to feed his family,...

They all hate one another, Leila (the magnificent Taraneh Alidoosti) tells her brother Alireza (Navid Mohammad Zadeh) when he returns to the family home. It is a rare visit; he works in an industrial plant somewhere on the other side of Iran. He isn’t going to tell his family that he has been laid off with the promise of pay that has never materialized; in the Tehran family that crowds Saeed Roustaee’s long and absorbing clan drama Leila’s Brothers, he is supposed to be the properly functioning son.

What can you say about the other three brothers in this Cannes competition film? There is Manouchehr (Payman Maadi) who, as they all like to say, thinks with his pectorals. Parvis (Farhad Aslani) is very fat and a heavy drinker; they all expect him to die any day, though he does seem to keep fathering children successfully. Farhad (Mohammad Ali Mohammadi...

In “Leila’s Brothers,” a once proud, now pathetic Persian family teeters on the brink of ruin, held together by the assertive sister who’s tired of relying on men to decide her fortune. Taking matters into her own hands may be empowering to watch — there’s no question that “The Salesman” alum Taraneh Alidoosti, who plays Leila, towers over this male-dominated ensemble — but it’s also a recipe for potential tragedy in Iranian writer-director Saeed Roustaee’s novelistic, nearly-three-hour saga, his first to be selected for Cannes.

Some audiences may recognize Roustaee from another turbulent family portrait, “Life and a Day” (2016), whereas it was his terrific cop thriller “Just 6.5” (2019) — the closest thing Iran has produced to “The French Connection,” still unreleased in the U.S. — that put the helmer on my radar. Born in 1989, Roustaee represents a new generation of Iranian auteurs, and one who’s sly enough to...