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Circumstance (2011 film)

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Circumstance
Theatrical release poster
شرایط
Directed byMaryam Keshavarz
Written byMaryam Keshavarz
Starring
CinematographyBrian Rigney Hubbard
Edited byAndrea Chignoli
Music byGingger Shankar
Production
companies
  • Marakesh Films
  • A Space Between
  • Bago Pictures
  • Neon Productions
  • Menagerie Pictures[1]
Distributed by
Release date
  • January 23, 2011 (2011-01-23)
(Sundance Film Festival)
Running time
108 minutes
Countries
  • France
  • Iran
  • United States
LanguagePersian
Budget$1 million
Box office$555,511[2]

Circumstance (Persian: شرایط, romanized: Šar'ayet; French: En secret) is a 2011 French-Iranian-American dramatic film written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz starring Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy, Reza Sixo Safai and Keon Alexander. It explores homosexuality in modern Iran, among other subjects.

Plot

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Atafeh (Nikohl Boosheri) is the teenage daughter of a wealthy Iranian family in Tehran. She and her best friend, the orphaned Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) attend illicit parties and experiment with sex, drinking, and drugs.

Atafeh's brother Mehran (Reza Sixo Safai) is a recovering drug addict who becomes increasingly religious and obsessed with Shireen, coinciding with the collapse of his once-strong relationship with his sister.

The heads of the family are the Hakimi parents, Firouz and Azar, who reminisce on their youth and what has become and what will become of their family.

Production

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Set in Iran and released with subtitled Persian dialogue, the film was shot in Lebanon.[3] Circumstance contains a few English and French phrases. The budget was less than US$1 million.[4]

Maryam Keshavarz, the director, was raised in the United States but spent summers in Shiraz, Iran. She used experiences in Shiraz to direct towards the movie, such as being very adventurous and experimenting within the scenes of partying and hearing about her cousin's whipping at the hands of the morality police, in the plot. Circumstance was the first full-length feature film she directed.[4]

Keshavarz said that she wanted to make as authentic to Iranian culture as possible because, while Circumstance would likely be banned in Iran, Iranians would see the film via illegally imported copies.[4] All of the main actors were fluent in Persian. Because the Persian they knew was dated from before the 1979 Iranian revolution, the film creators used a dialect coach. Of the actors of the three most prominent characters, all were members of the Iranian diaspora and were born to parents who left Iran around the time of the revolution, and all three had family members in Iran. Two of those actors visited family in Iran. Nikohl Boosheri, who did not visit relatives in Iran, said that she socialized with Iranians in her hometown, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to get a better idea of what the contemporary Persian spoken in Iran was like; many of them were recent immigrants from Iran.[4] Sarah Kazemy, a Paris resident, visited relatives in Tehran while researching her role.[3] She said goodbye to her relatives before leaving Iran; because of her role in the film, Iranian authorities could prevent her from entering the country for much of the foreseeable future.[4]

Boosheri said that the film creators chose Beirut, Lebanon as the filming location because "[i]t was the right Middle Eastern feeling, it had the essence. And in Iran we wouldn’t have had the freedom to do what we did."[4] Because the militant Shia Islamist group Hezbollah, supported by the Iranian government, operated in Lebanon, the filmmakers did not wish to make the true intention of the film public at the time of the filming. They sent a false script to the Lebanese authorities and told them that they were making Keshavarz's thesis film, while in reality, they were making a commercial film. Lebanese authorities did have encounters with the actors while filming occurred. Larry Rohter of The New York Times said "[i]n the end, Reza Sixo Safai and other cast members agreed, that sense of constant anxiety and dread actually helped strengthen their performances."[4]

Release and reaction

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Critical reception

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Reviews of the film were mostly positive. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of 69 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7/10. The website's consensus reads: "A thought-provoking, insightful look into Iranian youth culture."[5]

Since the film was released, both the film was banned as well as Keshavarz herself was banned from returning to Iran by the Iranian authorities.[6]

Awards and nominations

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Circumstance won the Audience Award: Dramatic at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival[7][8] and was ranked one of the 50 best movies of 2011 by Paste Magazine.[9] The film won the Audience Favorite award, Best Director and Best Actress at the 2011 Noor Iranian Film Festival. It won Best Feature Film at the 2011 Paris Lesbian and Feminist Film Festival.

Autostraddle ranked the film in 27th in the 102 best lesbian movies of all time.[10]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Greenberg, James (January 23, 2011). "Circumstance: Sundance Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on 18 November 2017. Retrieved 17 November 2017.
  2. ^ "Circumstance (2011) - Box Office Mojo". boxofficemojo.com. Archived from the original on 2018-12-19. Retrieved 2020-04-28.
  3. ^ a b Solway, Diane (August 2011). "Who: Nikohl Boosheri & Sarah Kazemy". W. Condé Nast: 49. Archived from the original on 3 December 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Rohter, Larry. "Living and Loving Underground in Iran Archived 2017-04-26 at the Wayback Machine." The New York Times. August 21, 2011. Retrieved on January 31, 2012.
  5. ^ Circumstance at Rotten Tomatoes
  6. ^ Inspiring LGBT Profiles San Francisco Bay Times in February 23, 2012[dead link]
  7. ^ Press Release (January 30, 2011). "2011 Sundance Film Festival Announces Awards". Sundance Institute. Archived from the original on 28 July 2019. Retrieved 17 November 2017.
  8. ^ "Circumstance - Explore The Hidden, Underground World of Iranian Youth Culture". Archived from the original on October 3, 2011. Retrieved October 3, 2011.
  9. ^ "The 50 Best Movies of 2011". pastemagazine.com. 27 December 2011. Archived from the original on 7 August 2018. Retrieved 28 April 2020.
  10. ^ "Now, An Updated Edition Of The 102 Best Lesbian Movies Of All Time". Autostraddle. 2017-02-14. Archived from the original on 2017-11-04. Retrieved 2017-07-28.
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