Director: Marzieh Meshkini, Iran/France, 12A, 93min
Stars: Gol-Ghotai, Agheleh Rezaie, Zahed, Sohrab Akbari
On selected release
Meshkini, the wife of the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, offers a timely portrait of present-day Kabul in which Afghani street children fend for themselves while US planes streak across cloudless skies. With their remarried mother facing execution for adultery when her first husband, an MIA Taleban fighter, turns up after five years for transportation to Guantanamo Bay, a brother and sister pursue a life of petty crime in the hope that they will be arrested and reunited with her in prison.
This isn’t the first Iranian film to paint the region’s political and social upheavals on the faces of beautiful children while diluting its impact with sentimental and emotionally manipulative touches. There are strong details — fighting dogs, grimy children, the shell of a VW Beetle being used as a makeshift home — and a pessimistic conclusion. But the film lacks the sharper edge of Meshkini’s debut feature, The Day I Became a Woman. It doesn’t help that the expressive young leads have to play second fiddle to a cute dog.
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