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In this shocking, politically courageous look at the other' Iran, the plight of women is wilfully, sometimes furiously forced into plain sight. Director Jafar Panahi's narrative delicately drifts among several women, each story melting into another, while a sense of their everyday oppression comes into sharp focus. Unsentimental and deeply felt, the film has a pulp vigour, a bristling moral outrage that marks it as a very new kind of Iranian cinema. Jafar Panahi's film, made it to New York and was well received, the director himself was not. Arrested at JFK Arport. he was forced to endure the indignity of being forcibly fingerprinted. photographed for mugshots and held, chained hand and foot, for 16 hours by NY police.
"From my plane window I saw the Statue of Liberty. I tried to draw the curtains and there were scars of the chain on my hand. I wanted to stand up and cry that I'm not a thief! I'm not a murderer! I'm not a drug dealer! I am just an Iranian filmmaker.'—Jafar Panahi.
Panahi's film went on to win five of the major prizes at the Venice Film Festival, including Best Film.