Actor

Fereshteh Sadre-Orafaee

2: briefs
13:00: average
26 min: in total

On film.briefs2

The White Balloon

Jafar Panahi · 1994

Set on the eve of the Iranian New Year, Jafar Panahi’s 1994 debut follows seven-year-old Razieh as she tries to buy a goldfish with her mother’s last banknote. When the money slips through a street grate, she and her brother enlist the help of a young Afghan balloon seller to retrieve it. Filmed in natural light, with no score and minimal dialogue, the film observes childhood not as innocence but as embodied negotiation — with space, time, language, and adult indifference.

13:00

The Circle

Jafar Panahi · 2000

Jafar Panahi’s 2000 drama The Circle follows a chain of Iranian women navigating Tehran’s legal and social barriers in a single day. Shot in natural light with non-professional actors, it builds its critique through accumulation — not speeches or exposition, but repeated refusals: denied bus tickets, barred entrances, abandoned children, unanswered phone calls. The narrative circles back to its opening scene, underscoring systemic continuity over individual resolution. Banned in Iran and awarded the Golden Lion at Venice, it treats gender not as identity but as administrative condition.