Women Without Men

Munis (Shabnam Toloui) is a young woman in Tehran in 1953, pressed by her brother to marry and by the coup unfolding in the streets outside. She, Faezeh (Pegah Ferydoni), Zarin (Orsolya Tóth) and Farrokhlagha (Arita Shahrzad) each leave their old lives and end up in an orchard garden. Shirin Neshat, working with Shoja Azari, makes her first dramatic feature from Shahrnush Parsipur's 1990 novel, and she is better known for work on gender in the Islamic world.