No Date, No Signature

Kaveh is a doctor in the medical examiner's office. One night driving home he hits a motorcycle. There is a family on it; a father, a mother and two children. The collision looks slight. Kaveh examines the boy, sees nothing wrong, tells the family to go to a hospital and offers money. The father refuses. Everyone goes their way. A few days later Kaveh looks at a body at work and recognises the boy. Something else is written as the cause of death: food poisoning. Kaveh cannot be sure. He is not obliged to tell anyone, and he starts telling. Vahid Jalilvand directs and co-wrote the screenplay. Amir Aghaei, Navid Mohammadzadeh and Hediyeh Tehrani are in the cast. It is an Iranian production. It won best director and best actor in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival; the acting prize went to Navid Mohammadzadeh. The matter it builds is responsibility divided in two; both men may be guilty and neither knows for certain. The father's strand carries the second half; the man knows he bought spoiled chicken and told nobody. The narrative shows the judicial process but the court does not work as a place of resolution. Its form is cold; the camera keeps its distance and there is almost no music. Its limit is pace; the narrative is slow and an expectation of thriller is not met. Who it is for: viewers who like Iranian cinema and drama of moral dilemma. Who it is not for: it is heavy, has no resolution, and the ending brings no relief.