Circumstance (2011 film)
Circumstance | |
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Keon Mohajeri | |
Cinematography | Brian Rigney Hubbard |
Edited by | Andrea Chignoli |
Music by | Gingger Shankar |
Production companies |
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Distributed by |
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Release date |
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Running time | 108 minutes |
Countries |
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Language | Persian |
Budget | $1 million |
Box office | $555,511[2] |
Circumstance (
Plot
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
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.
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
Critical reception
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
Awards and nominations
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 4th in the 102 best lesbian movies of all time.[10]
See also
- List of LGBT films directed by women
References
- ^ Greenberg, James (January 23, 2011). "Circumstance: Sundance Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 17 November 2017.
- ^ "Circumstance (2011) - Box Office Mojo". boxofficemojo.com.
- ^ 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.
- ^ a b c d e f g Rohter, Larry. "Living and Loving Underground in Iran." The New York Times. August 21, 2011. Retrieved on January 31, 2012.
- ^ Circumstance at Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ Inspiring LGBT Profiles San Francisco Bay Times in February 23, 2012
- ^ Press Release (January 30, 2011). "2011 Sundance Film Festival Announces Awards". Sundance Institute. Retrieved 17 November 2017.
- ^ "Circumstance - Explore The Hidden, Underground World of Iranian Youth Culture". Archived from the original on October 3, 2011. Retrieved October 3, 2011.
- ^ "The 50 Best Movies of 2011". pastemagazine.com. 27 December 2011.
- ^ "Now, An Updated Edition Of The 102 Best Lesbian Movies Of All Time". Autostraddle. 2017-02-14. Retrieved 2017-07-28.
External links
- Official website
- Circumstance at IMDb
- Circumstance Archived 2018-12-19 at the Wayback Machine at Neon Productions
- Circumstance at UniFrance
- An interview with Maryam Keshavarz at AfterEllen