The Circle

Synopsis

A relentless relay of interlocking stories following several women in contemporary Tehran over a single day—beginning in a hospital maternity ward where a mother laments giving birth to a girl, following two young women newly released from prison trying to buy bus tickets without male permission, an abandoned child on a street corner, and a prostitute arrested in a car raid, coming full circle in a rotating pan around a circular prison cell. Jafar Panahi and Kambuzia Partovi's Venice Golden Lion and FIPRESCI-winning feminist masterpiece banned in Iran.