Its a Dream

Roya is a resourceful young woman who is juggling with loans to pay back a large debt With her gift of the gab and her determination to fight her way out she finds herself at the top of a small ponzi scheme that promises to be lucrative but very soon the mechanism seizes up and a sense of control gives way to anxiety With a sense of narrative sequencing akin to his senior Jafar Panahi The Circle Blood and Gold Mahmoud Ghaffari portrays a protagonist hemmed in by a double straightjacket one where social and gender inequality are inextricably intertwined His character is neither a heroine nor the passive victim of a crushing system but warriorlike yet evanescent Arguably this determination which draws its energy from despair can be seen as an obligation incumbent on any filmmaker practising their art in todays Iran the obligation to fight up to the point where ones very absence leaves a void full of meaning