Yalda, A Night for Forgiveness (2019)

There really is a tv show, apparently, televised in Iran in which criminals get a chance on camera to be forgiven for transgressions sometimes as serious as murder, and this movie takes that concept as its basis and tells the story of Anar, a young woman seeking mass public forgiveness for murder - a bit melodramatic for me, but thriller-like tension arises from the fact the young woman is not as contrite about the crime as the show producers and the murdered man's wife would like.

★★★☆☆

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عنکبوت مقدس ('Holy Spider') (2022)

This unflinching look at the serial murders of Saeed Hanaei, an Iranian family man who (at least after he was caught) claimed his murders of sixteen prostitutes were religiously motivated (but, let's face it, war trauma, mummy boyness, male entitlement, and psychopathy came first, right?) is extremely hard to watch but utterly compelling given its basis in truth, given its electric performance from Zahra Amin Ebrahimi as the deep undercover journalist who dared bring Saeed Hanaei down, and given its jaw-dropping final scenes in which director Ali Abbasi reveals just how far Iran's corrupt masculinity will go to perpetuate itself.

★★★★☆

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Everybody Knows (2019)

A joyous wedding celebration in a wine region of Spain turns bad when a guest, the teenaged girl of an Argentinian family, disappears, possibly kidnapped, in Asghar Farhadi's beautifully acted, beautiful-to-look-at, absorbing, but ultimately inconsequential crime drama that spends so long on its sumptuous set-up, there's no time for the mystery except for in a series of lurching scenes in the film's final third in which the plot doesn't so much develop as the audience is perfunctorily caught up on a situation everyone except the audience (and perhaps, unimportantly, one or two other characters) already knows.

★★★☆☆

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The Charmer (2017)

In the opening scenes of 2017s The Other Side of Hope, Syrian refugee Khaled illegally smuggles himself into Finland and the movie follows his plight as he tries to establish himself in this potential new home, but The Charmer, another 2017 movie but a drama that unfolds with the intensity of a psychological thriller, shows how protracted the struggle to belong can be with Esmail, an Iranian immigrant two years living in Denmark, nightly scouring bars for women he hopes might furnish him with an out from a looming visa expiry, and his behaviour is as desperate as it is despicable.

★★★★☆

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A Separation (Jodaí-e Nadér az Simín) (جدایی نادر از سیمین) (2011)

A man caring for his father with Alzheimers, his wife who wishes to emigrate from Iran, and their daughter whose exam studies are overshadowed by the impossible choice she faces of either staying with her father in Tehran or travelling abroad with her mother, are rocked by an allegation of murder in this rivetting and oh-so-human drama from director Asghar Farhadi who fills his film with individuals close to god but separate from each other.

★★★★★

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The Salesman (Forušande) (فروشنده) (2016)

A husband and wife working on a production of "Death of a Salesman" are rocked by a home attack and he launches his own investigation to find the culprit, in this suspenseful, raw, affecting Iranian drama featuring director Asghar Farhadi's typically robust characters with deftly rendered lives, and many themes from Arthur Miller's famous play.

★★★★☆

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