Circumstance

Circumstance, winner of Sundance’s Audience Award and played at the prestigious MoMA Showcase New Directors/New Films, is a resistant and contradictory film that tackles a deep friendship turned forbidden romance between two young women, Atafeh and Shireen in a post-revolutionary, religiously extremeist Iran. Iranian American director, Maryam Keshavarz’s first narrative film, seamlessly brings to light important themes ranging from the painful exchange of addiction for religious zealously and the societal male-privileges such religiosity enables for Atie’s brother, Mehran, to the class disparities that exist between the two young protagonists and how their economic standing empowers or cripples them as women, especially in a restrictive religious society accompanied by its expectations of the female. Keshavarz employs a brilliant play in light that poignantly relays the evolution of intimacy while simultaneously presenting the dissonance of visibility alongside the self-discovery of these characters’ politicized personhood. Looking in from a outlier’s perspective, we come away with the understanding that this is shrill cry against the violation of the senses. Circumstance is an amazing piece that calls out and reels in the eyes and ears to destroy violating vigilance and to realize the power of seeing.