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Circumstance

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France, United States, Iran · 2011
Rated R · 1h 47m
Director Maryam Keshavarz
Starring Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy, Reza Sixo Safai, Soheil Parsa
Genre Drama

Teenage love is nothing new. But for Atafeh and Shireen, they are in completely uncharted territory, being that they don't fit what their society views as acceptable. While they're able to keep their relationship hidden for a while, Atafeh's conservative brother returns from rehab and threatens their relationship.

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What are critics saying?

70

The New York Times by A.O. Scott

Though it lacks the artful, headlong immediacy of "The Circle" and "Offside," Jafar Panahi's films about women in Tehran - and the breakneck exuberance of Bahman Ghobadi's "No One Knows About Persian Cats," about Tehran's underground music scene - Circumstance ripples with the indignant energy of youthful rebellion.

40

Time Out by David Fear

The closer this parable inches toward tragedy, the more you can feel the gap between good intentions and generic exotica-grandstanding widening into an unbridgeable chasm.

91

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

Here, love and attraction between two teenage girls put them on a collision course with Tehran society in general and one girl's troubled, increasingly religious brother in particular.

60

NPR by Mark Jenkins

Circumstance is best during its simpler, more naturalistic moments. In one, Mehran rebuffs a junkie who stumbles into the mosque, only to see that an Islamic hardliner is more compassionate.

67

The A.V. Club by Sam Adams

Perhaps it's unfair to compare Circumstance to the very different "Persepolis," but it's hard not to drift off to Marjane Satrapi's more pungent and personally inflected evocation of the same terrain, in which the characters are as vivid as their surroundings.

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