Dayereh
Iran / Italy,
2000, 91 min
Shown in 2001
CREDITS
- dir
-
Jafar Panahi
- prod
-
Jafar Panahi
- scr
-
Kambozia Partovi
- cam
-
Bahram Badakhshani
- editor
-
Jafar Panahi
- cast
-
Fereshteh Sadir Orafai, Maryam Parvin Almani, Nargess Mamizadeh, Elham Saboktakin, Monir Arab
- source
-
US - WinStar Cinema, 419 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016. FAX: 212-545-9931 WORLD - Celluloid Dreams, 24, rue Lamartine, 75009 Paris, France. WEB: www.celluloid-dreams.com
OTHER
Jafar Panahi's first feature, the delicate, charming The White Balloon (1995), was among the first products of the Iranian new wave to reach a wide and enthusiastic audience in the West. Winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, The Circle, which has been banned by Iranian authorities, is more ambitious and unsettling. While it shares the earlier film's clarity and formal precision as well as its feel for the bustle and surprise of daily life, it focuses with unflinching candor on some of the harsher aspects of life in the Islamic republic. For reasons that emerge only gradually and obliquely, six young women are in a state of agitation and panic. They seem to be in flight, though from what threat and toward what refuge remains mysterious. With great tact and sympathy, and without ever resorting to melodrama, Mr. Panahi stares at what, in any society, are uncomfortable, even taboo subjects: abortion, prostitution, family violence, the abandonment of children. The actresses give remarkably open performances; their faces (which, given Iranian standards of propriety, are all they have to work with) are alive with emotions. One of the deepest impressions The Circle leaves is of the terrifying but also in its way thrilling complexity of experience.
—A.O. Scott, New York Times
FACTOID #65
The combined running time for all the films in the Festival is approximately 310,000 minutes. Or to put it another way, 5,167 hours. That’s about 215 days of viewing, 24 hours a day, with no breaks.
