by Alireza Hatamvand
Worth: $10.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Payman Maadi, Parinaz Izadyar, Soha Niasti, Maziar Seyedi, Fereshteh Sadr Orafaee
Intro:
… powerful and captivating performance by Parinaz Izadyar.
At the press conference for Woman and Child at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Iranian filmmaker, Saeed Roustaee said: “My films are bitter because society is bitter. When I see no sweetness, what should I make?”
Saeed Roustaee is not wrong. The past few years haven’t been calm for Iranian society. And Roustaee — the most prominent young filmmaker in Iran today — has always tried to mirror his society and depict the struggles of its people; a path that hasn’t been without consequences. His previous film (Leila’s Brothers) was banned and blocked from screening in Iran, resulting in a six-month prison sentence for the filmmaker.
However, when it comes to cinema — and not the noise surrounding it — is Woman and Child a good film?
Woman and Child is the story of a widow, Mahnaz, who is carrying the burden of raising two children from a previous marriage. She is now about to marry a man named Hamid. But things disrupt everything.
At first, it seems like the two main threads — the troubles of Mahnaz’s son and her romantic relationship with Hamid — form the left and right lanes of a road that carries the main narrative of the film. But this road suddenly collapses. Many side roads branch out from it, most of which are dead ends.
Saeed Roustaee, who seems to value his social mission more than his artistic one, falls into the same trap as his previous film, Leila’s Brothers: looking into everything and missing most of them.
Here, he addresses women’s struggles in patriarchal societies, the challenges of raising teenagers, Iran’s dysfunctional judicial system, its outdated education system, and more — without being able to explore any of them in depth.
Multiple dramatic ideas are also presented in this same fragmented, patchy way. It’s no surprise that halfway through, the viewer may find themselves asking – what are these people even doing?
The messy script naturally doesn’t spare its characters either. It delivers stereotypical, shallow humans who get their turn in the spotlight every now and then — only to vanish a few minutes later.
But one character survives, to some extent: Mahnaz. And maybe she’s the one who keeps the film standing. Mahnaz is a hardworking, independent woman — a type we’ve seen over and over in Iranian cinema. But given the specific situation of women in Iran, this old model is still relevant and continues to captivate both Iranian and international audiences.
The strength of Mahnaz owes much to the powerful and captivating performance by Parinaz Izadyar.
Despite being screened at Cannes and nominated for the Palme d’Or (which it lost to another Iranian director, Jafar Panahi), it’s fair to say that Saeed Roustaee still hasn’t made a film that resonates with international audiences. Here, he hasn’t been able to extract something universal from his social concerns — something Asghar Farhadi, for instance, does so well. It’s a struggle that Roustaee hasn’t quite overcome — at least not yet.
