23/05/2025 - CANNES 2025: Saeed Roustaee weaves a highly sophisticated narrative and visual constellation around a grieving woman who decides to stop compromising

"Aren't we supposed to see my side of the story?" It's a great female character at the heart of a multi-faceted narrative echoing vast moral and societal issues that Iranian director Saeed Roustaee has masterfully directed in Woman and Child, unveiled in competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival. As is often the case in his country's cinema, it's a question of the tense boundary between what is immoral and what is illegal, as well as the cultural locks that are conducive to concealment, misunderstanding and even drama.

It's a dizzying kaleidoscope that the director spins like the optical spinning top of one of the protagonists, to the rhythm of the impressive small-perimeter sequence shots that he is so fond of, and which we've already seen in Just 6.5 and Leila’s Brothers. But this virtuosity is by no means an empty formula or a series of ostentatious directorial stunts, for while assembling a fascinating, rich tableau that gives real identity to the multiple characters interacting in its plot, the film remains firmly focused on Mahnaz (the impressive Parinaz Izadyar), whose entire perception of existence is about to be violently called into question.

“Don't you know your own son?” Bringing up her two children alone with the help of her mother (Fereshteh Sadr Orafaee) and sister Mehri (Soha Niasti), the whole little family sharing the same flat; nurse, widow and young forty-something Mahnaz is about to remarry ambulance driver Hamid (Payman Maadi) who is very keen to make their relationship official. However, the existence of the boisterous teenager Aliyar (Sinan Mohebi) and his little sister Neda (Arshida Dorostkar), who are unaware of their mother's romance, poses a problem for the imminent arrival of Hamid's family (who are still unaware that Mahnaz is a mother) to discuss the wedding ceremony. So for the time being it's best to keep the children out of sight, and they are put up with their paternal grandfather (Hassan Pourshirazi). To add to the complexity of the situation (a formidable scenario written by the director), the insolent Alyar is suspended from school for a week by the headmaster Samkhanian (Maziar Seyedi). And soon Mahnaz has a veritable nightmare on her hands. And “this is only the beginning…”.

Woman and Child is a fascinating, very fine, in vivo study of the potentially devastating power of what is left unsaid, of the grey area of love and family ties between compromise, truth and lies (“you know he's lying, but you want to believe him), of guilt and the desire for justice or revenge, and of the ethics of parenting. Woman and Child is an exceptionally rich psychological film that takes its time and is full of twists and turns. Above all, it is a magnificent and poignant portrait of a woman who refuses to let anyone decide for her.

Woman and Child was produced by Iranian companies Boshra Film and Iris Film and co-produced by French company Goodfellas which will also handle international sales.

(Translated from French)