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Desert Dancer

✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Romania · 2014
Rated PG-13 · 1h 38m
Director Richard Raymond
Starring Freida Pinto, Reece Ritchie, Tom Cullen, Nazanin Boniadi
Genre Drama, Music

Inspirational true story of Iranian dancer Afshin Ghaffarian, who risked his life for his dream to become a dancer despite a nationwide dancing ban.

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What are critics saying?

50

The A.V. Club by

The whole thing resembles nothing more than the kind of video a well-meaning high-school teacher would put on to occupy their class while they catch up on some paperwork. It will almost certainly be used for this purpose in the future.

38

Slant Magazine by Ed Gonzalez

The film's relentless turning of its characters' experience into platitudes and homilies is served for our too-easy consumption.

70

The Dissolve by Nathan Rabin

Desert Dancer is blessed by a powerful sincerity. The filmmakers clearly believe the bromides offered about the life-affirming power of dance and artistic expression. The conviction that this story matters and deserves to be taken seriously gets the film over its occasional rough patches.

63

New York Post by Sara Stewart

It may fall into some conventional paces as a triumph-over-adversity story, but Desert Dancer does manage to movingly convey the chilling, ultimately triumphant experience of Ghaffarian’s struggle for creative expression under a regime that tried to crush it.

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