A woman gives birth to a baby girl. Little does she know, but she and her daughter are already unwanted.
Three women are released from prison and their need for money leads them to take desperate measures.
An unmarried woman seeking an abortion is rejected from her father's house by the violent threats of her brothers.
Their crimes are vague, their guilt or innocence unimportant.
Their paths cross, the suspense of their intrigues heightens. Their plights are often too tragically similar. Their world is one of constant surveillance, bureaucracy and age-old inequalities. But this stifling world cannot extinguish the spirit, strength and courage of the circle of women.
(18 votes)
2.
It's a girl. The first words spoken in Jafar Panahi's The Circle should be celebratory, but instead the mood of the scene is mournful. The relatives will be furious. Director Jafar Panahi leaves the innocence of his delightful The White Balloon behind in this harrowing, passionate portrait of the plight women endured in Iran before the easing of strict Muslim law. His vision of women scrambling through streets and dodging cops like fugitives in a police state is more of a nightmarish fable than a realist drama, but no less affecting for it. Panahi drifts through the stories of a handful of women recently released from prison (their crimes are left ominously vague) with an easy grace and an angry sense of injustice that brings us full circle: back to prison, where a cell door shuts with a deafening clang that reverberates through the credits and beyond. --Sean Axmaker
(17 votes)
3.
Banned in Iran, Jafar Panahi's THE CIRCLE is set almost entirely on the busy streets of Tehran - a place where women are restricted by numerous laws, including a repressive dress code, and can only travel accompanied by a man. The beginning of the film focuses on two women, Arezou (Mariam Palvin Almani) and Nargess (Nargess Mamizadeh), who have been given temporary leave from prison and have no intension of returning. They attempt to flee to Nargess's hometown, which she claims is as beautiful as a Van Gogh painting, but are deterred by police. Meanwhile, their friend Pari (Fereshteh Sadr Orfani), who has just escaped from jail, is pregnant and needs an abortion. Panahi's lens continues to shift from one woman to another as this eye-opening tale circles back on itself. More serious in tone than the director's brilliant, lighthearted debut, THE WHITE BALLOON, THE CIRCLE shares many of its technical and narrative flourishes, making it another example of Iranian cinema at its best and most politically aware.
(17 votes)
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