The Circle (film)

Infobox Film
name = The Circle


caption =
director = Jafar Panahi
producer = Jafar Panahi
writer = Kambuzia Partovi
narrator =
starring = Nargess Mamizadeh
Maryiam Palvin Almani
Mojgan Faramarzi
Elham Saboktakin
Monir Arab
Solmaz Panahi
Fereshteh Sadr Orafai
Fatemeh Naghavi
music =
cinematography = Bahram Badakshani
editing = Jafar Panahi
distributor = Artificial Eye
WinStar Cinema
released = flagicon|Italy 6 September 2000 (premiere at VFF)
flagicon|USA 13 April, 2001
flagicon|UK 21 September, 2001
flagicon|Australia 7 March, 2002
runtime = 90 min
country = Iran
Switzerland
Italy
language = Persian
budget = $10,000 (estimated)
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id = 1:220884
imdb_id = 0255094

"The Circle" ( _fa. "Dayereh") is a 2000 drama film by Iranian independent filmmaker Jafar Panahi that criticizes the treatment of women in Iran. The film has won several awards, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2000, but it is banned in Iran.

Plot

The film begins in a maternity ward of a hospital, where the mother of Solmaz Gholami is upset to learn that her daughter has just given birth to a girl, even though the ultrasound indicated that the baby would be a boy. Worrying that her in-laws will force their son to divorce her daughter, she tells another daughter to call her uncles.

At the phone booth, she runs into three prisoners, including Arezou and Nargess, who have just been released. They are trying to come up with money so that they can go to Nargess's home village. The third prisoner is immediately arrested, as she tries to pawn a gold chain, leaving just the two women. Arezou eventually finds enough money to get Nargess a bus ticket, and the two of them separate.

At the bus station, however, Nargess can't get on the bus, because it is being searched, and she is afraid that she will be arrested again. Instead she tries to find another prisoner, Pari, who sneaked out of the prison that day. Pari's father will not let her in the house, however, and just as she leaves, Pari's two brothers appear to "talk" to their sister. She manages to escape, and eventually makes her way to a hospital where she finds Elham, another former prisoner who has hidden her past and is now a nurse, married to a doctor.

From her conversation with Elham, we learn that Pari is pregnant, but the father of her baby has been executed, and she has no one to approve her having an abortion. Elham, after being released, became too conservative to do anything to help her, so Pari is left to wander the streets at night. Without ID, she cannot get into a hotel. At a street corner, she finds a mother trying to abandon her little girl, hoping that she will find a better life with a family. She continues wandering the street.

The mother is first caught as a prostitute, but she later manages to escape. Then another woman who was picked up as a prostitute, is taken to prison. She is placed in a cell with other women we met so far in the movie, and the phone rings outside the metal door. A guard answers and comes to the window, calling for Solmaz Gholami, the woman with a girl baby in the first scene. So is the circle closed.

tructure

The film does not have a central protagonist: instead, it is constructed around a sequence of short interconnecting stories that illustrate the everyday challenges women face in Iran. Each story intersects, but none is complete, leaving the viewer to imagine both the background and the ending. All the actors are amateurs, except Fereshteh Sadr Orafai who plays Pari, and Fatemeh Naghavi, who plays the mother abandoning her daughter. [Interview with Jafar Panahi on the Fox Lorber DVD.]

Throughout the movie, Panahi focuses on the little rules symbolizing difficulties of life for Iranian women, such as the need to wear a chador under certain circumstances, or not being allowed to travel alone. He frequently uses contrast to illustrate both happiness and misery in contemporary Tehran: for example, a marriage party, symbolizing a happy ending, takes place in the background while a young girl is abandoned.

Cast

* Nargess Mamizadeh as Nargess
* Maryiam Palvin Almani as Arezou
* Mojgan Faramarzi as Prostitute
* Elham Saboktakin as Nurse
* Monir Arab as Ticket Seller
* Solmaz Panahi as Solmaz
* Fereshteh Sadre Orafaiy as Pari
* Fatemeh Naghavi as Mother
* Abbas Alizadeh as Father of Pari
* Negar Ghadyani
* Ataollah Moghadas as Haji
* Khadijeh Moradi
* Maryam Shayegan as Parveneh
* Maedeh Tahmasebi as Maedeh

References

External link(s)

*

###@@@KEY@@@###succession box
title=Golden Lion winner
years=2000
before="Not One Less"
after="Monsoon Wedding"