Mahmoud Al-Atassi Women without men; is an Iranian film which was directed by Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari in 2009. The movie reflects women issues in Iran and the oriental culture generally. The film based on an Iranian novel which has the same name. It was written by Shahrnush Parsipur in 1989. The writer was prison-ed five years because of this novel and it is forbidden until now to be distributed in the Iranian land. The film has four main women characters embodying a several situations in the Iranian society. The writer and the directors criticize enslaving women and considering them as bodies controlled by men or even by some dominate women. The film take a place in 1953, where there was a coup against Mohammed Mosaddegh by the UK and USA. None of the film characters is politically active, but Munis has the interest of supporting Mosaddegh and follow up the news, while her brother prevent her from that. The four main characters are Munis, Faezeh, Zarin and Fakhri. Munis is a liberal woman reached the age of thirty without getting married and her brother tries to arrange her a husband because he feels ashamed of that. Faezeh is the best friend of Munis; and she loves Munis's brother secretly. Bothe women are middle class women. Zarin is a prostitute woman; she hates her life and wants to change it hardly and she sets at the bottom of the social pyramid. Fakhri is an upper class woman who is tired of her husband and wants to dislocate her husband. The movie starts with Azzan (Islamic call for prayer) which reflects the religion issue in the film as one of the most important elements. Munis stands alone on the roof wearing her Islamic dress (Higab-scarf), she takes it off and the scarf falls on the ground as she throws herself into the sky. She seems like flying in freedom after she took off her heavy weights of religious and cultural thoughts that were forced on her by the society and the dominant power of men. She says while she is flying into the sky "I'll have silence, silence, and nothing, and I realize the only freedom from pain is to be free from the world". The scene shows the hardness of her life with the Hijab which portrays religious and traditional barriers that she can't break, so she decided to leave them on the earth and go away to the sky, where she can find freedom to enjoy. The four women decide to survive from the society and have their own freedom, as they all meet in a strange garden. The garden is outside the city and it has its own gatekeeper. Whenever the woman come near of the garden, the door is opened by the gatekeeper without any knocking. In this garden women have their own freedom to live their live as they always wanted as they also face their fears and challenges. The concept of "the garden" goes all the way back to the Babylon time, which it has the oldest texts that talk about the sacred, secret garden. The space that devoted for love symbolizing the Garden of Eden. The bible has also mentioned the sacred garden and describe its beauty as the woman body and the act of love. The film is one of the best films I have watched which deals with symbolism and it is so rich with it, so I will give one of the best examples in the film. When Zarin was doing her job as a prostitute, as she is sick of her life and she seems like a dead woman. She has a strange costumer. She usually doesn't look into the face of her costumer. She waits the costumer until he finishes having sex with her. But the strange costumer has touched her differently, he softly touches her arm and then her face. She might has felt that, he touches her soul not her body with a dirty and sexualized desire. So she decides to see that different man. When she opens her eyes, she sees a faceless man and then she runs away. The faceless human in dreams can be explained by discovering the one self's hidden character. As she doesn't want to continue her life under the pressure and the ashamed society who forced her in a way or another to have such a dirty life. surprisingly, the man is the garden gatekeeper himself, as he is shown later on.

AfroPixFlix More of a visual impressionist than storyteller, Shirin Neshat uses the thread of magic-realism to weave together vignettes of five besieged Iranian women. The film beautifully depicts the early fifties era in Iran, during the Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi coup and rebellion against American-British usurpation. Men fare badly in this feature, with maybe one silent gardener playing a benign male role. Neshat has a gifted eye, so check out the extra features for her detail-rich explanations of film nuancing. AfroPixFlix finds 8 fig-forks for this film-festival feature.Women Without Men (Zanan-e bedun-e mardan) 2009; 91 mins Directors: Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari Writers: Shoja Azari, Shirin Neshat

Karl Self In a way, it does what it says on the tin: it's a movie about women who escape the -- always suppressive -- men in their life. In Iran in the 1950ies. There is a woman whose brother is trying to force her into marriage, a prostitute, the ageing wife of a general, a girl in love with an orthodox Muslim. All suffer ignominy from men without really engaging them or even fighting back. They eventually all retreat into a surreal orchard owned by the general's wife. At the same time we get to witness a bit of the political upheavals of the 1954 CIA-sponsored coup against the democratically-elected prime minister Mossadeq.Director Shirin Neshat was born in Iran and left as a young woman as a result of the 1979 Islamic revolution; so she knows both Iran and the West. Here she is able to employ her expertise as a video artist in some scenes, which give the film a unique visual style (for example there is a "still" scene where the people seem to be both frozen as well as slightly moving).What I didn't like about this movie is that it always stays on the political surface. We notice that there is a revolution going on, but we don't get to see any historic context -- by way of saying "sit up and listen, USA, this is how you fecked up Iran in a big way". Communists as well as loyal supporters of the Shah somehow seem to be equally opposing "the system". I also didn't like how women are portrayed as helpless victims of one-dimensionally evil men.

thisissubtitledmovies Women Without Men is the debut feature from 'visual artist'-turned- director Shirin Neshat, well known for her artistic works exploring gender relations. It is the adaptation of the 1989 novel of the same name by Shahrnush Parsipur, which was banned by the Iranian government in the 1990s for its outspoken depiction of female oppression.Women Without Men is a tasteful, beautifully shot, well-meaning drama with some excellent performances and strong story set in a fascinating period in Iranian history. It's let down a little by its tendency to rely on clichés and convenience when it comes to character, but still an extremely enjoyable take on female independence and the intertwining lives of these four women. LB