The Cinematheque

Mehraveh Sharifinia garnered much praise and a few festival laurels for her commanding performance in Vancouver Film School alumnus Ghazaleh Soltani’s timely new film, the writer-director’s fiction feature debut. Sayeh (Sharifinia) is an independent, unmarried woman on the cusp of turning 30, living and working in the bustling capital city of Tehran. As with the millions of Iranian women of her generation who elect to remain single, she’s in defiance of the strict conventions of the Islamic Republic, which maintain that women, by law and custom, should be the property of their husbands. That reality rears its head when age-conscious Sayeh decides she wants a baby; told that, due to her gender and unwed status, the likelihood of adoption is slim—or off the table entirely, should she want a boy—Sayeh pursues a more illicit alternative.