Tehran Taboo

In a taxi in Tehran a woman sits with her son. The driver is negotiating. Pari's husband is in prison and she needs his signature to divorce; the signature does not come. Sara is pregnant and wants to work, and for that she needs her husband's permission. Donya has to find the money for an operation before she marries. Babak is a young musician; a matter opens over a girl he met one night at a club. Four lives in one city, and all their problems are knotted in the same place. Ali Soozandeh wrote and directed. It is a German and Austrian co-production in Persian. The film screened in the Critics' Week section of the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. It could not have been shot in Tehran; the actors were filmed against a green screen and the scenes were turned into animation by rotoscoping. The city was built in a computer by that method, and real faces stand underneath the animation. The matter it treats is the double standard; the film shows plainly that the rules do not work the same for everyone. The narrative does not leave the three women as victims; each tries her own way out. The film shows sex and prostitution directly and builds scenes that could not appear in Iranian cinema. The animation is realistic but the colours are deliberately dull. The ending brings no improvement. Its limit is tone; the narrative is dark, there is no hope, and some scenes are didactic. Who it is for: viewers who like adult animation and social drama. Who it is not for: it is dark, hopeless, and the ending bitter.