Set in contemporary Iran in the unseen world of Iranian youth culture, filled with underground parties, sex, drugs and defiance, Circumstance is the story of two vivacious young girls — wealthy Atafeh and orphaned Shireen — discovering their burgeoning sexuality and, like 16 year-old girls anywhere, struggling with their desires and the boundaries placed upon them by the world they were born into.
Circumstance is a dramatic film written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz starring Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy, and Reza Sixo Safai. It explores homosexuality in modern Iran, among other subjects.
About the Story
Atafeh and her brother, Mehran, have grown up in a home filled with music, art, and intellectual curiosity. Atafeh dreams of fame and adventure, and she and her best friend, Shireen, explore Tehran’s underground scene with youthful exuberance and determination to be themselves. Meanwhile, Mehran returns home from drug rehab, and renounces his former decadent life with a vengeance. His once obsessive practice of classical music soon finds more destructive outlets.
Having lost his parents’ trust, Mehran is jealous of Atafeh’s loving relationship with their father and tries to find new meaning in his life. He relentlessly watches his family and slowly becomes estranged from them. As Mehran disapprovingly observes a budding relationship between Atafeh and Shireen, he becomes obsessed with saving Shireen from his sister’s influence. The once close siblings find themselves at dangerous odds with each other. As violence and desire collide, the once safe haven of the family home becomes increasingly claustrophobic and threatening.
About the Production
Set in Iran and released with subtitled Persian dialogue, the film was shot in Lebanon.[2] Circumstance contains a few English and French phrases. The budget was less than US$1 million.[3]
Maryam Keshavarz, the director, was raised in the United States but spent summers in Shiraz, Iran. She used experiences in Shiraz to direct towards the movie, such as being very adventurous and experimenting within the scenes of partying and hearing about her cousin’s whipping at the hands of the morality police, in the plot. Circumstance was the first full length feature film she directed.
Keshavarz said that she wanted to make as authentic to Iranian culture as possible because, while Circumstance would likely be banned in Iran, Iranians would see the film via illegally pirated copies. All of the main actors were fluent in Persian. Because the Persian they knew was dated from before the 1979 Iranian revolution, the film creators used a dialect coach.
Of the actors of the three most prominent characters, all were members of the Iranian diaspora and were born to parents who left Iran around the time of the revolution, and all three had family members in Iran. Two of those actors visited family in Iran. Nikohl Boosheri, who did not visit relatives in Iran, said that she socialized with Iranians in her hometown, Vancouver, British Columbia, to get a better idea of what the contemporary Persian spoken in Iran was like; many of them were recent immigrants from Iran. Sarah Kazemy, a Paris resident, visited relatives in Tehran while researching her role. She said goodbye to her relatives before leaving Iran; because of her role in the film, Iranian authorities could prevent her from entering the country for much of the foreseeable future.
Circumstance
Directed by: Maryam Keshavarz
Starring: Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy, Reza Sixo Safai, Keon Mohajeri, Sina Amedson, Fariborz Daftari
Screenplay by: Maryam Keshavarz
Production Design by: Natacha Kalfayan
Cinematography by: Brian Rigney Hubbard
Film Editing by: Andrea Chignoli
Costume Design by: Lamia Choucair
Music by: Gingger Shankar
MPAA Rating: R for sexual content, language and some drug use.
Studio: Roadside Attractions
Release Date: August 26, 2011
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