A story of forbidden love, Maryam Keshavarz’s film concerns a love affair between young women played out in Tehran.
The film, released after political turmoil in Iran with the elections of 2009, delves into a youth counterculture there.
Schoolmates and lovers-to-be Atafeh (The Bold Type’s Nikohl Boosheri) and Shireen (Sarah Kazemy) join a gay male friend in clubs and in helping to secretly dub the gay-themed film Milk into Persian.
Social class plays a part in their story as Shireen, whose parents are dead and who is from a more impoverished class than the more well-off Atafeh, concedes to marrying Atafeh’s troubled brother to be closer to her love.
There is no happy ending in this tale, but the sheer fact of having consummated their relationship is audacious, and even revolutionary.
