Tales

Ghesse-ha

Co-writer-director Rakhshan Banietemad’s return to fiction filmmaking, greeted with the Best Screenplay award at Venice, is a tour-de-force portrait of a people and a society at the breaking point.  In a series of interlocking short stories, Banietemad takes up the lives of characters from some of her previous films [Gilenah (2005), The Blue-Veil (1995), etc.] to find them still struggling for some degree of personal freedom and dignity.  The film’s pervading sense of despair makes it all the more poignant when some do manage to find it, even if in fleeting glimpses in the night.

Iran Novin Film.  Producer: Rakhshan Banietemad.  Director: Rakhshan Banietemad.  Screenwriter: Rakhshan Banietemad, Farid Mostafavi.  Cinematography: Koohyar Kalari.  Editor: Sepideh Abdolvahab.  Cast: Fatemeh Motamed Aria, Payman Maadi, Baran Kosari, Farhad Aslani, Mohammadreza Forootan.  DCP, color, in Persian with English subtitles, 91 min.