Written and directed by Jafar Panahi (Offside (2006)). Autofiction of sorts. Widely feted as one of the best movies of the year. Won the Palme d'Or at Cannes 2025.
A coincidence brings generic everyman/nobody Vahid Mobasseri into contact with Ebrahim Azizi who just maybe tortured him during a bout of incarceration for industrial relations activity. Abducting him, and after digging the requisite grave but failing to bury the man alive, he goes to George Hashemzadeh (in a bookshop) for advice who punts him to hard-boiled wedding photographer Mariam Afshari. (They later share some kind of minor-note PTSD romance that is underexplored.) The to-be-wed couple (Majid Panahi and Hadis Pakbaten) tag along in their wedding togs and she drags in her ex Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr as supposedly only he can positively ID the man.
I'd say it's just one damn thing after another if it weren't for the excess verbiage and histrionics. I felt it lost its shape with 30 minutes to go as the crowd mounts a quixotic mission to help the man's wife. (Don't they have ambulances in Iran?) The narrative arc is very similar to State of Siege (1972) and doubtlessly many other movies that try to show heroic human responses to implacable regimes. The cinematography is quite good; apparently it was an urban guerrilla shoot.
A Critic's Pick by Manohla Dargis. She bangs the Waiting for Godot drum. Peter Sobczynski. And so on. Most react to it more as a political document (bareheaded women, how things have changed!) than cinema.
