There Is No Evil

An Iranian film in four parts, built around the death penalty. The first part follows an ordinary day. A man leaves work, does the shopping, dyes his mother's hair, collects his daughter from school, and goes to his night job. What that job is becomes clear only at the very end. In the second part there is a soldier. During his military service his turn comes to carry out an execution; he refuses, and an argument runs through the barracks all night. In the third there is leave. A young soldier goes to see his fiancée and learns there who has died. The fourth part takes place in a house in the desert. An old man has to tell his niece about a decision he made years ago. From there the connection appears. Four stories show what one system does to four separate people. What the narrative is interested in is not punishment but complicity: the film really asks about the one who carries out the order, the price of refusing, and the price of not refusing. Conscription is at the centre. The execution duty is handed out at random, and whoever refuses cannot complete his service, cannot get a passport, cannot find work. The last shot of the first part is the film's hardest moment. The narrative shows a mechanism without any warning. The making of the film is part of the story too. The director was under a ban on filming in the country and the production was shot as four separate short pieces, in a way that would not draw attention. The film won the Golden Bear in Berlin; the director could not leave the country and his family collected the award. Ehsan Mirhosseini, Mahtab Servati, Kaveh Ahangar and Baran Rasoulof are in the cast. Mohammad Rasoulof wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes political cinema and narratives told in parts. Who it is not for: anyone without patience for length; the film runs close to two and a half hours and each part moves at its own pace.