Directed by Maryam Keshavarz • 2011 • Iran, France
Starring Nikohl Boosheri, Sarah Kazemy, Reza Sixo Safai

A suspenseful tale of love and family upended by obsession and suspicion, CIRCUMSTANCE is also a provocative coming-of-age story that cracks open the hidden, underground world of Iranian youth culture, where a young woman’s most electrifying passions can become the most dangerous of secrets. The Audience Award winner at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, writer-director Maryam Keshavarz’s debut feature boldly takes viewers inside a modern Iran rarely witnessed by outsiders: an exhilarating, invisible realm of illicit nightclubs where young hipsters risk arrest—and their futures—as they experiment with sex, drugs, and defiance, all while trying to evade the authorities.