A triumph of invisible craftsmanship that embraces so much specific detail that none of the women ever comes across as an emblem or an abstraction.
The Circle(دایره)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Iran, Italy, Switzerland · 2000
1h 30m
Director Jafar Panahi
Starring Nargess Mamizadeh, Maryiam Palvin Almani, Mojgan Faramarzi, Elham Saboktakin
Genre Drama
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Various women, whose lives intertwine, struggle to function in the oppressively sexist society of contemporary Iran. Their crimes are vague, their guilt or innocence unimportant. Their world is one of constant surveillance and inequalities, but it cannot extinguish the spirit, strength, and courage of the circle of women.
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What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Suspenseful and ingeniously directed.
New York Daily News by Jami Bernard
How dangerous it is to be a woman in Iran, especially one going against the wishes of her menfolk, is brought home time after time in these related vignettes.
New Times (L.A.) by Jean Oppenheimer
An extraordinary film from a born filmmaker.
New York Post by Jonathan Foreman
This film is fighting the good fight, albeit in a rather heavy-handed way.
This tightly structured, often exciting film is among the boldest in a series of increasingly explicit movies.
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
Restrained yet powerful, devastating in its emotional effects.
Baltimore Sun by Michael Sragow
A terrific social drama, the work of an artist, not a pleader.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Sean Axmaker
A mix of the poetic and the polemic, the film is oddly abstract and untethered.
Philadelphia Inquirer by Steven Rea
Quiet, rageful indictment of a two-tiered Islamic society.
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