Synopsis
A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.
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Cast
- Nikohl BoosheriAtafeh
- Sarah KazemyShireen
- Reza Sixo SafaiMehran
- Soheil ParsaFirouz
- Nasrin PakkhoAzar Hakimi
- Sina AmedsonHossein
- Keon AlexanderJoey
- Amir Barghashi
- Elie Njeim
- Hadi Tabbal
Recommendations
- 91
Entertainment Weekly
Here, love and attraction between two teenage girls put them on a collision course with Tehran society in general and one girl's troubled, increasingly religious brother in particular. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
Overall this is an impressive debut from a filmmaker with something to say and the talent to say it. - 70
The New York Times
Though it lacks the artful, headlong immediacy of "The Circle" and "Offside," Jafar Panahi's films about women in Tehran - and the breakneck exuberance of Bahman Ghobadi's "No One Knows About Persian Cats," about Tehran's underground music scene - Circumstance ripples with the indignant energy of youthful rebellion. - 70
Wall Street Journal
This is a movie about longing, desire, desperation and the abandonment of principle - quite a collection of themes, all universal. - 67
The A.V. Club
Perhaps it's unfair to compare Circumstance to the very different "Persepolis," but it's hard not to drift off to Marjane Satrapi's more pungent and personally inflected evocation of the same terrain, in which the characters are as vivid as their surroundings. - 60
NPR
Circumstance is best during its simpler, more naturalistic moments. In one, Mehran rebuffs a junkie who stumbles into the mosque, only to see that an Islamic hardliner is more compassionate. - 60
New York Daily News
Keshavarz's vision is clear and heartfelt, and everyone has an urgency in their eyes. - 50
Slant Magazine
Since Mehran's embrace of hardline Islam is never dramatized or elaborated on in any insightful way.
