Dayereh (The Circle , 2002, Iran)

Through the fate of four Iranian women we get to know a lot of the troubles of the existence of a generation. The camera moves from one to the next, regularly abandoning the previous women. But they are truly abandoned, outcast, not just by the visual storytellers, but by the people around them too. The filmmakers cleverly showed us what we, westerners would consider cruel, absurd habits, that do more than border injustice: e.g. women cannot travel alone on a long distance bus. The plot was well delivered. the combination of (the two) professional and non-professional actors worked great. Never having been in Iran the shots, the busy scenery of Tehran were exotic for my eyes and enjoyed them, despite the oppressive lens the director showed it to us.The central part in these women’s lives was their relationships to children. The first one, whom we never seen, gave birth to a baby girl, instead of the expected boy and because of the social stigma she may have killed herself or simply disappeared. Another mother gives up her 3-4 year OD daughter, tries to abandon her on the street in the hope that she would be taken in by a good family. Meanwhile her heart breaks. A third woman who just got out of prison ( we don’t know why was she in) does the unmentionable (we don’t know what it is but probably selling her only property, her body) in order to get some money to her innocent looking friend so she could go home to the countryside and live in peace. All these and the other women are either defined by their children or their connection to men, and not by themselves. This is the greatest injustice here. It is a bleak movie, with no hope for any of them.