GOOD BYE

Noura is a lawyer in Tehran, but her licence has been revoked. Her husband, a journalist, has fled to the south of the country to escape the authorities; she lives alone in a small flat and is working on her way out of Iran. Her pregnancy becomes part of this plan, because it might open papers and paths that would otherwise stay closed – and each stage leads to new conditions, intermediaries and waiting rooms. “Good Bye” (original title “Bé omid é didar”) by Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran 2011, follows her through this process, which she pursues with a lawyer’s precision.

Rasoulof made the film after he had been convicted together with Jafar Panahi and banned from working; it is not about his own case, but about the conditions under which it was made. The staging is spare, and Leila Zare carries the film in the lead role. In Cannes it played in 2011 in the Un Certain Regard section, where it won the directing award. The film was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2011.

Shown at the 2011 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2011 · Film Archive