Women Without Men (2009)

Women Without Men is a 2009 film adaptation of a Shahrnush Parsipur novel, directed by Shirin Neshat.

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born artist and photographer whose work explores gender issues in the Islamic world. Women without Men is Neshat's first dramatic feature. Neshat, banned from even visiting Iran since 1996, lives and works in New York City. Neshat left Iran in 1979, just before the Islamic Revolution that drove the Shah into exile.

The film profiles the lives of four women living in Tehran in 1953, during the American-backed coup that returned the Shah of Iran to power. The film was called "visually transfixing" by the New York Times reviewer Stephen Holden, who added, "the film surpasses even Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon in the fierce beauty and precision of its cinematography (by Martin Gschlacht)." Two of the film’s recurrent images are of a long dirt road extending to the horizon on which the characters walk, and a river that suggests, "a deep current of feminine resilience below an impassive exterior.

Synopsis

The film begins with the sound of Adhaan. A woman is standing on the rooftop contemplating jumping. She jumps in slow motion. Flashback. Munes does not want a husband. Her tyrannical brother, Amir Khan, wants Munes to prepare for a visiting suitor and demands that she cook dinner for them. When she scoffs at the idea, he gets angry, and threatens that if she leaves the house he will break her legs.

Actors