Bani-Etemad’s latest fictional feature focuses on one of the narrative threads of the powerful Under the Skin of the City (2001), her best-known film in this country: the problem of drug addiction in contemporary Tehran. Mainline uses the form of a gripping road movie to tell its story of a mother fighting to get her child—played by Bani-Etemad’s own daughter—to a heroin rehab clinic on the Caspian coast. Co-directed with longtime collaborator Mohsen Abdolvahab, Mainline finds Bani-Etemad continuing to explore the formal properties of the image—in this case, extensively using a handheld camera and experimenting with color desaturation.