This shocking documentary, which premiered this year at the Montreal Film Festival, paints a heartbreaking picture of the growing population of runaway girls in Tehran. An unseen religious judge allows the filmmaker to record proceedings that seem to fall somewhere between a hearing and a trial. The condemnatory tone of the judge interrogating the girls is mercifully balanced by the more sympathetic questions asked by director Moshar. The film presents an unflinching account of a hopeless generation of young Iranians trying to survive in a purgatory between familial pressures and social restrictions. 

A twenty-six-year-old about-to-be mother is dseperately searching for someone to take care of her unborn baby. The odd assortment of people she encounters creates moments of both levity and dread. But what makes this aestheically daring documentary distinctive is its strong reliance on shots taken from behind a flower-patterned chador (the head-to-toe outer garment worn by raditional Muslim women), which also serves as a perfect metaphore for a veiled society. Though jarring at times, the hand-held camera seems to function as an ideal distancing tool to keep the audience at an arm's length of objectivity throughout the film.