A film by Ali Soozandeh.

Animation pro­ves a cun­ning tech­ni­cal choice in TEHRAN TABOO, a first fea­ture writ­ten and direc­ted by Ali Soozandeh. Like Marjane Satrapi’s 2007 PERSEPOLIS, it offers just enough distance to explo­re the high­ly char­ged the­me of sexu­al and per­so­nal free­dom in Iran wit­hout sala­cious­ness. Women are the main vic­tims here, whe­ther mar­ried, divorced or sin­gle, and their lives are depic­ted as pure tragedy.
Far from the usu­al vic­ti­mi­zed street­wal­ker, the pro­sti­tu­te Pari in the first epi­so­de embo­dies the truth that no repres­si­ve sys­tem can com­ple­te­ly quell the human spi­rit. There’s some­thing that recalls Anna Magnani’s eart­hi­ness and gre­at heart in Elmira Rafizadeh’s many-hued per­for­mance. Pari’s back­story is a fai­led mar­ria­ge to a drug addict who is now in pri­son. When she tri­es to get a judge in the Islamic Revolutionary Court to sign her divorce papers, he bar­ters his signa­tu­re for a con­cu­bi­ne arran­ge­ment. She moves into an apart­ment he owns with litt­le Elias, which is not such a bad deal. (Deborah Young)

Deutschland/ Österreich 2017, 96 Min., far­si OmU
Regie & Buch: Ali Soozandeh
Kamera: Martin Gschlacht
Schnitt: Frank Geiger,Andrea Mertens
Darsteller: Elmira Rafizadeh, Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Arash Marandi, Negar Nasseri, Bilal Yasar, Morteza Tavakoli, Alireza Bayram, Klaus Ofczarek