Women Without Men review - Tehran 1953, and a British-American backed coup is about to oust the democratically-elected PM, Mohammad Mossadegh, and reinstate the Shah’s autocratic regime.
It’s against this background that Iranian artist Shirin Neshat’s debut feature plays out. Shot outside Iran, the film is nonetheless very Iranian in its mix of humour and despair, of realism and surrealist elements.
Four women from very different social backgrounds are brought together by events and find a temporary, fragile refuge in a mystical orchard outside the city.
Not all the elements cohere, but there’s a sense of poetic yearning that’s hard to resist.
